Vellum Book

Foreword     ix
Part I
Pulling Down the Sky     3
Saint Catherine in an O: A Song About Knives     4
Montezuma's Painters     6
Small Blessing for a Child     8
Fumbling with a Field Guide on the Back Arroyo Trail     9
Charlie Chaplin Dug Up & Ransomed: A Prayer     11
Second Pilgrimage, Rodeo Nites     12
Line     14
Those Two Sketches by Severn in Italy     15
Part II
A Partial Invocation of Our Days     19
Night Train: A Listener's Guide     21
The Keeper of Hands     23
Portrait of the Whirlwind in Job as a Passenger Pigeon Flock     25
The Scabbard of Limbs Means Flesh     26
An East Toledo Map of Ash     29
Thumb Trick     31
Licking the El Greco     34
A Blues About Wanting in the End     35
What I Mean When I Say Blossom     38
Part III
Shapes of Stone & Prayer     43
Trenton, a Solmization, Two Rivers, a Few Tells     45
Patio Lull with House Guest & View     48
Swallowed Things     50
To a Student Who Refuses to Read More of The Inferno After Learning None of It Is True     52
ADamaged Fresco of The Massacre of the Innocents     54
Audubon Diptych     56
Towards the Sound of a Heron Stepping on Ice     59
Notes     66
Acknowledgments     67