Acknowledgments and Notes

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following publications, in whose pages these works first appeared often in a slightly different form:

• Anteup: "Having Survived Winter"; "It Creeps Over You."
• Anthology: "Eldest Daughter of Wei."
• Artemis: "Basic Rules of Grammar."
• Artisan: "Her Lover Eyes the Exit"; "The Red Eye of Dawn."
• The Brownstone Review: "Back Up Off Me"; "Funeral Arrangements."
• Cold Mountain Review: "Ravished Landscapes."
• The Baltimore Review: "The van Gogh in Us All."
• Beloit Poetry Journal: "Late Night Ramblings."
• Columbia: "Exegesis: A World Gone Awry."
• Confluence: "Cris de Coeur."
• Dogwood: "Scorned Is Scorned."
• Eratica: "Flirtation in the Front Parlor"; "The Waffle House."
• The Evansville Review: "A Drunken Sestina."
• Evergreen Chronicles: "Cole."
• The Iconoclast: "I Wanted to Take You Home."
• Jabberwock Review: "A Trip."
• Janus Head: "Bernadette, Vocalist, Age 27: Omaha, NE"; "Perspectives of Someday Isle.", "Salah: Dulles Airport", "A Toast to Each Kiss", "Trellis Laced with Morning Glories", "Vivid."
• Karamu: "When Your Wife Is Beautiful and Other Myths of Creation."
• Lummox: "Invoking Erato."
• New Stone Circle: "Portrait of LoLo."
• Obsidian II: Black Literature in Review: "The Answer to Your Question, Sir: Or the Diapora of the Dahomey"; "But Never Seeing My Eyes"; De La of Justice"; "Double Negatives"; "Grand"; "Green Pods"; "Gulfport, Circa 1963"; "Hell in My Kitchen"; "Kuei-Ts'ai"; "Like Women of Long Ago"; "Mississippi: Journey, History, Acceptance"; "Phone Call: The Morning After"; "Show Don't Tell"; "Some Other Woman's."
• Obsidian III: "Legacy to Our Daughters."
• Papyrus: "Palimpsest."
• Peregrine: "The Iron Bars."
• Sliding Moon Press: "Contemplating the Natural Order"; "The Cynic"; "Hokku Lunacy."
• The Southern Review: "Hera Has Her Say"; "A Siren Repents."
• Tempus: "Boudica Burns Eden."
• Touchstone: "Human Body, Human Mind."
• Xavier Review: "Troubling Accents", "Waking", Yes, I Was a Debutante."

Some poems refer to family members both living and dead. Because of their influence on the person I have become, I want to acknowledge them here: "Grand" is about my maternal grandmother, Gaynette Pugh; "Like Women of Long Ago" is about my mother, Ann Flowers Rivera and the death of her only sister, Dorthy Jean Wilson; "Till" is about the death of my cousin, John Jared Wilson; "Green Pods" is about my sister, Tiffany Rivera Adams;"Some Other Woman's" is about my maternal grandfather, Charles Blaylock Flowers. I would also like to thank my husband for his love and support.