Foreword by Susan Mitchell — vii
1
Adam Before the Advent of Psychiatry — 6
A Bit of Forgiveness — 7
Reading Dante in the ICU — 9
Adam Explains His Implications — 11
Adam Home from the Wars — 13
Here’s to Killing — 14
Adam Relates the Last Days of Rome — 17
Adam Explains the Origin — 18
Red Shift — 19
Adam Reports from the Distant Future — 22
2
Black Hole Owners Association — 25
Letter to Toss from the Airborne Plane — 28
Secret Fellow Sufferers, [our fathers are liars.] — 30
What I Asked For — 31
Secret Fellow Sufferers, [once I believed if I wore my sadness] — 33
On Believing the Night Has an End When the Night [...] — 34
Secret Fellow Sufferers, [once more our old wounds] — 36
Secret Fellow Sufferers, [have you been the unwinged thing] — 37
At the Optometrist’s I Almost Remember a Story […] — 38
Theory of Cruelty — 40
Lake Bobby — 41
3
TO THROW THE LITTLE BONES THAT SPEAK
I. [Jack of Hearts, Jack of the weakest ventricle] — 45
II. [Let’s say the heebie-jeebies are a kind of flea] — 46
III. [My little hooked pickerels, just look] — 47
IV. [Edge of the bright earth] — 48
VI. [The last—give or take—forever I’ve spent] — 49
VII. [Ladies and gents, if you look to your left] — 50
VIII. [From a list of great evils I’ve chosen the best] — 51
IX. [Karen you promised you’d come but didn’t] — 52
4
Secret Fellow Sufferers, [please join me in compiling] — 55
Secret Fellow Sufferers, [some of us are cured] — 56
Joe Cuomo, Local Weatherman, Tests the Old Idea of Heaven — 57
About to Hope — 59
Secret Fellow Sufferers, [I’ve come a long way] — 60
Last Supper — 61
Notes Toward Basic Betterness — 64
