This debut collection by Cave Canem fellow Geffrey Davis burrows under the surface of gender, addiction, recovery, clumsy love, bitterness, and faith. The tones explored—tender, comic, wry, tragic—interrogate male subjectivity and privilege, as they examine their "embarrassed desires" for familial connection, sexual love, compassion, and repair. Revising the Storm also speaks to the sons and daughters affected by the drug/crack epidemic of the '80s and addresses issues of masculinity and its importance in family.

Some nights I hear my father's long romance
with drugs echoed in the skeletal choir

of crickets.

Geffrey Davis teaches at Penn State University.

Geffrey Davis holds an MFA from Penn State University (2012), where he's completing a doctoral dissertation on American poetics. A Cave Canem Fellow, he is also the recipient of the 2013 Dogwood First Prize in Poetry, the 2012 Wabash Prize for Poetry, the 2012 Leonard Steinberg Memorial/Academy of American Poets Prize, and the 2012 A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize. Davis has poems featured or forthcoming in a variety of journals, among them Crazyhorse, Massachusetts Review, Mid-American Review, Hayden's Ferry Review, Mississippi Review, Nimrod International Journal, and Sycamore Review. He considers the Puget Sound area "home" - though he's been raised by much more of the Pacific Northwest (Tacoma, WA), and now by central Pennsylvania as well.

Dorianne Laux's most recent collections are The Book of Men and Facts about the Moon, both from W.W. Norton. A finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and winner of the Paterson Poetry Prize, the Oregon Book Award, and The Roanoke-Chowan Award for Poetry, Laux is also the author of Awake (her first book of poetry), What We Carry, and Smoke from BOA Editions. Laux's poetry has appeared in numerous American journals and anthologies, and she has received poetry fellowships from the MacDowell Colony and the National Endowment for the Arts. She teaches poetry in the MFA Program at North Carolina State University and is founding faculty at Pacific University's Low Residency MFA Program.

TABLE OF CONTENTS


I. The Book of Father

What I Mean When I Say Farmhouse 2
Revising the Storm, 1991 4
King County Metro 6
Instructions for a Third-Grade Report on Texas 8
What I Mean When I Say Chinook Salmon 10
The Epistemology of Birds 11
What I Mean When I Say My Name Is Nobody 13
Call Me Now 14
Unfledged 16
What I Mean When I Say Roller-Pigeon 18
What I Mean When I Say Elijah-Man 20
A Poem for God 22
More than Forgery 24
What I Mean When I Say Truck Driver 26
What My Father Might Say, If I Let Him Speak 27
My Last Love Poem for a Crackhead, #23 28
From the Unsent Letters: To Klamath Falls Correctional Facility 29

II. Diaspora

The Newakum River 32
Write the Memory of Throwing the Stone 33
Teaching Twelve-Year-Olds the Trail of Tears 34
Venison 35
How Can I Be 1/32nd Blackfeet? 36
If the Moon Were My Lover 37
What I Mean When I Say Diaspora (I) 38
What I Mean When I Say Diaspora (II) 40
The Epistemology of Hospitals 42
The Epistemology of Gentleness 43
The Epistemology of Marriage 44
Divorce Means 45
From 35,000 Feet / Praise Aviophobia 46
Meditation at a Pennsylvania Diner: Early Morning 47
Write the Memory of the Girl Dancing in Apple Blossoms 49
Modus Operandi, Ad Infinitum 50
6th Avenue Bouquets 52

III. Here a Coursing Wall, There a Slanted House

Building the Stones 54
What Returns 55
I Dream of Meeting Myself, Age Seven, County Fair Field-Trip 56
A Proposal from the Previously Divorced 58
The Epistemology of Rosemary 59
Farmer's Market Sweet Plums: Apology to the Flower Lady 61
Dear Destruction 62
Like This, For a Reason 63
Ode to Trout 65
What I Mean When I Say Forever 66
The Discipline of Waking Love 67
What We Set in Motion 68
The Epistemology of Preposition 72
Upriver, Downstream 73

Notes 74
Acknowledgements 75