Prose poems that turn conventional thought on its head, allowing magic to spring from mundane details of middle age life.

Charles Rafferty is the author of six collections of poetry, including The Smoke of Horses (BOA Editions, Fall 2017); one collection of short stories; and six poetry chapbooks. His most recent poetry collection is The Unleashable Dog (Steel Toe Books, 2014). He is the recipient of grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Connecticut Commission on Culture & Tourism. His short stories have been collected in Saturday Night at Magellan's, and his poems have appeared in The New Yorker, O, Oprah Magazine, Ploughshares, The Southern Review, Cincinnati Review, TriQuarterly, Quarterly West, Massachusetts Review, Poetry Daily, and Verse Daily. He lives in Sandy Hook, CT, where he works at a technology research firm, directs the MFA program at Albertus Magnus College, and is on the faculty of the Westport Writers' Workshop.

Contents

After the Flood 5
Diminution 6
Grackles 7
Golf Course Moon 8
An Adulterous Spring 9
A Demonstration of How One Thing Leads to Another 10
The Problem With Where We Live 11
Drift 12
Mal Evans Counting 13
Futility 14
The Man Who Bled Wine 15
Returning From Vincentown 16
Common Nocturne 17
The Bridges 18
First Owl 19
Reflection 20
The Problem With Wanting Something 21
Unnoticed 22
Flags 23
Genie 24
Metropolitan 25
The Problem With African Violets 26
Winter Festival 27
Leisure 28
Caught 29
Two Pianos 30
Two People Kissing in the Park as Seen From a Speeding Train 31
Windows 32
For the Last Polaroid 33
Carp 34
Aqueduct 35
Quarry 36
The Reductionist 37
Resumption 38
Royalty 39
Barbarian 40
Garden State Racetrack 41
The Problem With Mercy 42
Blackbirds 43
Swans 44
Hotel Bible 45
Catena 46
The Problem With Spotfin Shiners 47
River 48
Swamp 49
Magellan 50
Antique 51
An Explanation of How One Thing Leads to Another 52
Proofs 53
The Untuned Piano 54
Pelican 55
Ellipses 56
Forecast 57
Summer 1985 58
Snowfall After Hearing Hard News 59
On First Looking Into Keats's Chapman's Homer 60
Obscurity 61
A Farewell to Poetry 62
The Saddest Bid for Immortality Ever Devised 63