For any of us, what stays? For the arsonist's wife who has not yet left? The devout saint trudging another mile in his nail-shoes? The lost couple in their dying moments in a Nebraska blizzard? The old woman who refuses to leave her home in Chernobyl? With an unflinching eye, James Crews gives us the forbidden love, forbidden unions, and secret lives that, whatever the loss, the attrition, the cost, we must acknowledge, must hold, must keep. And here, in Crews's finely wrought, deeply felt poems, is their testimony.

Acknowledgments

Part I
Palomino
The Abandoned Church of St. Mary Magdalene
Paradoxical Undressing
Sex in the Rain
Catch
Regret
Against Seizing
Foreshadowing
The Birds Have Not Yet Left Chernobyl
Orpheus, Still Singing
A Beginner's Guide to Ice Fishing
An Unexpected Warm Day in Wisconsin
Looking Back
The Farmer's Wife Has Not Yet Left Him
Dare to Speak
After Revelation
Revision

Part II
One Hundred Small Yellow Envelopes
1. (Proof)
2. (Total Eclipse)
3. (City of Gold, City of Salt)
4. (The Gold Field)
5. (Wawanaisa Lake: Ross)
6. (Wawanaisa Lake)
7. (Nowhere Better Than This Place)
8. (Letter to Felix: Ross)
9. (Perfect Lovers)
10. (The Raising of Lazarus)
11. (Golden)
12. (Lover Boys)
13. (Estimations: Ross)
14. (Aparicion)
15. (Fan Letter)
16. (Bedroom, After)
17. (Orpheus, Twice)
18. (One Hundred Small Yellow Envelopes)
19. (Last Light)
20. (Assumption)

Part III
What Light Does
Metacognition
With This Kiss
Les Cendres
The Arsonist's Wife Has Not Yet Left Him
Leonardo, Lovelorn in Santa Babila
The Naming
How to Write a Love Poem
Saints Sergius and Bacchus: A Martyrology
Like Angels
Calamus, Not Drowning
Anniversary
The Gardeners
Red-Tailed Hawk, Summer Storm
The Bees Have Not Yet Left Us

Notes

James Crews was the 2009 recipient of the Prairie Schooner Bernice Slote Award for Emerging Writers. He is the author of What Has Not Yet Left, winner of the 2009 Copperdome Prize; One Hundred Small Yellow Envelopes; and Bending the Knot, winner of the 2008 Gertrude Press Chapbook Prize. He lives in Portland, Oregon.