Shirt in Heaven. Jean Valentine

      

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       This e-book edition was created through a special grant provided by the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation. Copper Canyon Press would like to thank Constellation Digital Services for their partnership in making this e-book possible.

       for Emily Wilson

       2002–2013

       in loving memory

      Contents

       Title Page

        Note to Reader

       Luna Moth

      1  Luna Moth

      2  A Child’s Drawing, 1941

      3  1943: The Vision

      4  Forest, Stars

      5  Her last year

      6  God of rooms

      7  Hold the finch

      8  1945

      9  For love,

      10  Shirt in Heaven

      11  there’s nothing when

      12  Peace to bad waters

      13  Bardo

      14  W. 13th Street

      15  Open

      16  A leaf, a shadow-hand

      17  You rope that pulls them where they do not go

      18  The helicopter,

      19  When I lost my courage

      20  His hand takes

      21  Bury your money

      22  Poem with endwords by Reginald Shepherd

      23  She will be

       Friend

      1  [The ship] is slowly giving up her sentient life.

      2  I cannot write about it.

      3  Hospice

      4  Isn’t there something

      5  Down on the street

      6  Both you & he

      7  My words to you

      8  I’m going to sleep

      9  I’d get you a glass of champagne

      10  We turn in dream

      11  Are all the things

      12  You’re gone

      13  Then

      14  You Speak

       Threshold

      1  Could it be heat?

      2  The Window:

      3  The Door:

      4  Bellini, Saint Francis

      5  In the Famine Museum

      6  Friend,

      7  Great-grandmother,

       Then had we well put to, without form, without text

      1  Note in winter

      2  Ten Degrees

      3  When I woke up, our time

      4  When I woke up, my friend

      5  Self-Portrait, Rembrandt, 1658

      6  Song

      7  Icebergs, Ilulissat

        About the Author

        Books by Jean Valentine

        Acknowledgments

        Copyright

        Special Thanks

Luna Moth

Luna Moth

      Luna moth

      at the black window

      I hold you in my signal-memory

      but I can’t get back to how to talk to you,

      silent as the black window.

      Silent as your body

      little book

      on which

      I in my hunger wrote.

A Child’s Drawing, 1941

      A woman ladder leans

      with her two-year-old boy in her arms.

      Her arms & legs & hands & feet

      are thin as crayons.

      The man ladder

      is holding his glass of bourbon,

      he is coming out of the child’s drawing

      in