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From “A Poppy in My Hair”

At 35,000 feet, the center of heaven, in the deep Milky Way, we meet.

Genesis

I wish I could tell him he’s not going to hell. It would be so freeing for him.

Ghazals for the Body

What I want is a woman who knows all the meanings of indulgence.

Girl in Red

Instead, she stares right at us, her shoulder half-naked in broad daylight.

Go Humbly

What right does an American mutt like me have to depict in fiction the lives of a Salvadoran family?

Golden Days

Like superstitious sports fans, we played the song night after night. Since giving birth I’d become hyperaware of death.

Gone, the old verve, gone

My days pass through me as music through a thin, stretched wire.

Gossip

Her knees seemed about to give way, and he quickly grabbed her elbow.

Grass Moon and Other Poems

You are home in your bed like a soft animal with really intense feelers.

Great Falls

Walking on Canal Street, I slipped on the curb and fell on my face.

Great Plains

All of those feelings—you do not have them, they have you.

Hand-Me-Down Halloween

The year we left the reservation a white boy gave me a trash bag.

Hands

The story of Wing Biddlebaum’s hands is worth a book in itself.

Hardview Hotel

Rules are rules. No one comes this close, this fast. Protocol reigns.

Harvesters

I’ve got other plans. And they don’t center on ringnecks.

Heavy Lifting

His chest was sweaty and his T-shirt stuck to it, bleeding black.

Hispaniola

You mixed a drink of sugar, rum, brackish debris. The ice was finite.

Homecoming

I walk over to her for what seems to be an eternity. “May I have this dance?”

Horse Thief

He calmed the animal with song while loosening the slipknot.

How I Became a Banker

When the thugs from the bank showed, up my father laughed.

How Sex Feels: A Reverie

He begins to realize that the impossible event may well be about to occur.

How to Be a Real Indian

Claim to be Choctaw or Cherokee. Claim to be a princess too.

How to Live in an American Town

You are the only one who knows not to pour water on the flame.

Hunan Wishes

The wok oil ready to tremble and smoke—everything, ready.

Huntington, Connecticut

I Carried My Father Across the Sea

He was a child. He was dead. He was the shaft of a Long-tailed Astrapia.

I Did Like Butter

It had always been this way. Mothering, for my mother, was a cameo role.

I Want to Know Why

There’s something I saw at the race meeting I can’t figure out.

In London Town

Part of my desire to be in London related to its writers.

In the Car before School

She’d do anything once, to know what it was like.