A LUCENT FIRE
By Patricia Spears Jones

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Early Poems
Wearing My Red Silk Chinese Jacket
Spanish Lesson
Mythologizing Always: Seven Sonnets
Sonnet 1
Sonnet 2
Sonnet 3
Sonnet 4
Sonnet 5
Sonnet 6
Sonnet 7 (Change of Season or the Break ¿up Sonnet)

Poems from The Weather That Kills
The Birth of Rhythm and Blues
In Like Paradise/Out Like the Blues
Encounter and Farewell
If I Were Rita Hayworth
The Usual Suspect
San Francisco, Spring 1986
Baby Hair Shirt
Glad All Over
The Perfect Lipstick
Sly & the Family Stone under The Big Tit/Atlanta, 1973
5:25 a.m.
Measure
What the Gods of Fire Charged Me
New Blues

From Femme du Monde
Hope, Arkansas, 1970
Ghosts
Commes des garcons
Sapphire
Shack with Vines
Why I Left the Country: A Suite:
The Suburban Dream
A Gallant History
The City Proper

The Village Sparkles
Saltimbanque
All Saints Day
My Matthew Shepard Poem
Laura
Hud
April 1994-Two Deaths, Two Wakes, Two Open Caskets Ron Vawter
April 1994-Two Deaths, Two Wakes, Two Open Caskets: Lynda Hull
Femme du monde

From Painkiller
Painkiller
What the First Cities Were All About
Spring Snow
All Saints Day, 2001
Shimmer
My Movie
Waiting for the Year of the Horse
Son Cubano
Pump
Trabajan la sal y azucar
What I Have Not Done for Love
Failed Ghazal
Notes for the Poem, ¿Beloved of God¿
How He Knows Me
Aubade
Blue Saturday
A Lost Key
My Angel #1
My Angel #2
Last Day of Passover, April 2006

From Repuestas
Hay algo mas triste en el mundo
Y cuando se muda el paisaje
Murion tal vez de verguenza estos trens

From Swimming to America
Beuys and the Blonde
Swimming to America
A Tale of Morandi
Kara Walker Draws the Blues
After South Pacific
Mary J. Blige sings ¿No One Will Dö
A City in Heaven
Dream Book
Borges Dream, 4:35 a.m.


From Living in the Love Economy
Living Room
Life Lessons
Love Come & Go (The George Hunt Painting)
February Thaw
Pull Up Pants
Second Person Hurting
Living in the Love Economy
Subsequent to Thomas Sayers Ellis
Day After May Day
Family Ties
The Fringe of Town
Facebook Profile Moment (God) in Chinese
King Pleasure Meets the Philosopher
Back to School
Indian Summer

NEW AND UNCOLLECTED

ETTA JAMES AT THE AUDOBON BALLROOM
Self- Portrait as Shop Window
Self- Portrait as Midnight Storm
Sylvia Plath: Three Poems
Last Seen Wearing
Sylvia Plath, Office Worker
The Talk-Show Producer Keeps Calling

What Beauty Does
Arsenal
Ermine
Fop
Fats Domino sings ¿I am walking to New Orleans¿
Fatboy Slim intones ¿big bright yellow sun¿
Randy Crawford sings ¿Knocking on Heaven¿s Door¿/January 14, 2007
Aretha Franklin sings ¿What a Friend We Have in Jesus¿
Kurt Cobain sings ¿In the Pines¿
`what the Fates allow¿
Wearing Mr. Song
Dinner with the ghost of Lorenzo Thomas
Nothing is planned
Stroking the pigeon (after the film Amour)
Occasioned by Akilah Oliver
From The Brooklyn Song
Bob at 29/Back in Rome
Broken embraces, broken wings
Patato y Totico play ¿Ya Yo E¿
The Land of Fog and Poetry

Patricia Spears Jones's work sings with the vibrancy and intensity of a blues singer.

Patricia Spears Jones: Arkansas born and raised; resident of New York City for more than three decades, Patricia Spears Jones was named by Essence.com as one of its “40 Poets They Love” in 2010. She is author of the poetry collections: Painkiller, Femme du Monde and The Weather That Kills.