Table of Contents
I Grief Cartographer
If You Really Want to Ruin Me 15
Apartment Sweet Apartment 17
When It Ended 18
Home Video 20
Going to the Basement 22
Ode to Eleanor 23
II Bullet in Reverse
Tokophobia 29
Afterschool Special 30
Milk 31
Coming Out (and Being Pushed Back In) 33
Pulse 36
Green Acres Is the Place to Be 38
Why So Many Penises (or Should I Say, "Pee-Ni")? 40
Said the Gun to the Woman on Her Way to Planned Parenthood 42
Mirror, Mirror 43
The Theory of Evolution 45
The Man Interrupts What I'm Saying About Sexism to Explain It to Me 48
Other Woman Rationalization 50
Kiss Number Thirty-Nine or So 51
If You Stayed 52
Movement 53
Unconditional 54
Ode to Red Lipstick 56
III Before-After Girls
Eulogy for the Family Pig 61
The Weight 63
Ode to Beauty 65
Frankie Lane's Tae Bo Class Has Sent More Kids to the Infirmary Than Lice 67
On Being One of the Skinny Girls at Fat Camp 68
IV What Makes the Bathwater Blush
Fever Slow 72
Waiting to Kiss 74
What If Dreams Could Get Leaked Like Celebrity Sex Tapes? 75
Your Bathwater > Wine 77
Pancake 79
Too Long for a Postcard 80
Forever Home Aubade 82
Ode to Our Age Difference 84
My One Millionth Love Poem for You 85
The Light at the End of the Tunnel Is Green 86
Window 88
V One Unbreakable Bean
A Student Asks Me How to Make It as a Writer and I Remind Myself 93
Self-Portrait as Someone to Love 96
Holy Thank You for Not 98
Acknowledgments 103
About the Author 105
