Table of Contents

I. Low Country

The Magic Blanket of Laura Vicuña

Day of the Dead

Fall River at Midnight

Driving Through Salina

Burns, Kansas

Baptism

Leadville

Grandfather

The Performance Artist

Fountain Street

The Visitor

Infidelity

Dangerous Men

Kettenbiel

Big Hill

II. High Ground

Graveyard Shift

The Missouri Basin

The Embrace

Highway 84

I Will Arrive in Seattle Tonight

Fireweed

Grassy Bald

Stone Prairie

Cut Shop

Christmas

The Vow

Offering

Dead Man’s Slide

The Last Picture Show

III. Protocols

Honeymoon

The Arrangement

The Romantic

Monday Morning

Possibilities

For the Love of Three Cherries

A Walk at Kobe Terrace

September Villanelle

The Ascetic

The Empty House

Far From the Edges of a Conceit

Surrender

IV. Oracles

The Surface Holds

Lake Eola

Leu Gardens

Femme Inspiratrice

The Key

Mona’s Dream

The Guide

Answer Key

Via Sacra

St. Catherine’s Head

Retrogradia Cruciata

Lupa Noctus

Hymnal

In Mylapore

Keisaku

Strangers in the Pyrenees

V. Systems

Chaos Theory

Orders

Severance

The Cabal

Who Watches the Watchers?

Babel

The Graveyard of Empires

America, forgive this…

A Primate’s Progress

The Acupuncturist

Requiem for Pluto

Eulogy for a Moose

Kurt Waldheim’s Lost Preamble

Requiem Aeternam

De Facto Stranger

Annus Horribilus

VI. Mythos

Figurina Spiritinata

In the Shadow of Bacchus

Cocktail Napkin Colloquies

Cat House

Filum Sicarii

Persephone in Autumn

She Will Arrive

VII. Diversions

L’affaire de M. Wickham

Territory

Manners

Twelfth Night Masquerade

The Demon Life

A Snake’s Progress

The Snake Eating Its Own Tale

Penelope in Flux

“Your ego keeps you awake at night”

Forgive My Baroque Sensibility

Poetry will Suffice

VIII. Precedents

The Forum

The Seal

The Tribunal

The Threshold