Introduction xv
Words Were Burning 1
I Walls
Make Love Not Wall 6
Ladies 11
I Was a Funny Person Once 14
600 16
II Aids
Terrorist Angel 24
All of Us Are Leaving 27
Extraordinary Measures 34
Paul 36
Paul 38
For Richard 40
III Mother Hunger
Dear Mother 44
My Mother Was Not My Mother 46
How Fragile 51
The Whole World Is Raining 52
Battered Baby 53
Dear White Women 58
IV Femicide
Rachel's Bed 64
Women Left for Dead and the Man Who's Saving Them 70
Baptized 85
The Bureau of Sex Slavery 86
Disaster Patriarchy 92
Freeing the Birdsong 101
V Grief
Folding 108
Theresienstadt 111
Where All the Grief 116
VI Falling
How do you live on the edge of what's over? 128
After the fires 130
Dear Mother (Earth) 132
Cicadas 136
VII Skin
Here's How We Like It 140
All Snap in My Jaw 142
The War Has Begun 144
It Will All Go Like This 147
Sometimes It's So Can't Stop 151
Who Will We Become Without Touch? 155
VIII Reckoning
Let Him Be Our Unifier 164
Keep Us Fed 168
The Alchemy of Apology 171
Finding Your Place 183
Roses the Size of Teacup Saucers 191
To All Those Who Dare Rob Us of Our Bodily Choice 195
Eve's Revolution 199
"Becoming Part of That Suffering and Dancing Country" 212
Disruption 216
"Is This the Moment?" 220
Then We Were Jumping 223
Epilogue
V: A Dream Vision of My New Name 228
Acknowledgments 239
Credits 241