Like the Sea

Preface xiii
I Like Mary Glass 1
Dance Is Our First Art Form 2
Under a Nearly Cloudless Sky 4
A Caul Should Be Kept for Life 9
The Defeated Owl Spirit 12
Lake Tahoe Never Blinks 13
Alone in the Shell 15
Taking Three Hundred Years to Grow into an Oak Tree 19
A Desire to Steal 21
Like Anything That Feels Really, Really Good 25
Until They Are Lost 28
The Pacific Is Made of the Blues of Mary's Dream of a Glass House 34
Like the Jellyfish That Wash Up on the Beach That She Sometimes Accidentally Steps On 35
Fairytale Modernism 38
Appetite 43
We've Danced with Ruth and Merce on Anna's Redwood Deck 44
At Last, They Come Out—Explosively but Gently 45
Heart Beating under Bark 50
Mary Does Not Love Aaron 54
I Could See That They Were Running and Skipping and To Me It Was Dancing 56
Her Voice Is Voluptuous, Almost Masculine 58
Even Though She Is a Vegetarian 62
My Excited Pupils Enlarged / M. XXX 64
The Secret That Was Melody's Alone 67
In You 69
Honey from Mr. Larkin's Bees 70
Like the Noses of Rabbits 71
The Stars Are Aligned 72
Eyes Washed in Tears 73
Girlfriends Who Traveled to the Other Side 75
Mary Cannot Imagine That It Is Anything Serious 80
Imagination Is a Killer 82
The Nature of Grief 84
The Same Thing 85
Mary's Companion Lover 88
He Will Lose Nico 89
Into Her Skirt Pocket 90
To Wait Is to Love 92
Like a Drug in Eliza's Veins 94
Pulled Out by Coda's Hot Light 99
To Eat Is to Steal 101
To Love Is to Wait 104
Dance That Is All 105
Time to Dance 106
A Scale Model of Vietnam 108
To Nourish 109
The Halprins Are Friends of Godunova 110
And No Birds Sing 111
A Big Newfoundland Dog Named Carlo 112
Mother of Black Dance 114
Big, Drooling, Shedding Beast 115
The Same Deep Thought 117
The Knitting Is So Tender 120
Down Haight Street 121
No Strings 122
Yucatecos Like Me Speak Maya 127
Visible Stars, Even When the Sun Is Up 132
Something Begins 133
Mary Sees a Baby's Face in the Waves 136
Curved as a Dolphin Bone Held in the Sea 138
Eliza Says Her Sorrow Is So Great That the Mountains Changed Places and Began to Leak Milk 139
Ocean's Time 141
Blood Everywhere 144
Nothing Inside of Mary 145
No Song 146
Is This What You Wanted? 147
That Dark Involvement with Blood and Birth and Death 148
That White Feather Floating on Top of the Sea 149
What Happened? 150
Would Something Else Have Happened? 153
Until It Dissolves in One's Mouth 154
The Heart Is a Safe Place / Especially if It Belongs to a Beloved Sister 156
As She Fingers the Breath Holes of the Abalone Shell Again 160
And Someone Turned the Moon Off 162
To Disappear 163
Like the Sea 164
Afterwor(l)d 167
Acknowledgments 173
Illustration Credits 175
Notes 179