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legs in the attic but they would not let me keep the real leg. The real leg they cut off and I guess it went somewhere like to a shelf or an incinerator. Sometimes I wish it had a proper burial.

    â€œProbably has to do with medical waste,” Josh says. “There must be laws.”

    Yesterday was fine. I was straightforward with them. I told them why I wrote the things I wrote. I read with a Native American poet.

    Someone asked, “Do you feel the burden of your identities?” I said yeah, I feel it. The Native American said he doesn’t think of it as a burden. His first language was Cherokee. He doesn’t speak it anymore.

    I am writing my acceptance speech for the Best Disabled Writer Award. The speech begins: I need some new words.

    Tell us. How is it getting around? It’s awful. You have to negotiate with so many people on the sidewalks and you can hear their thoughts, like “Hurry up” and “Why are you walking so slow?” and “Move out of my way.”

    Zahra: You’ll get better at passing. It’s a pain in the ass, I know. You’ll learn, I promise. Just make it out of the woods.

NOTES

    â€œThe Ugly Law”: Italicized text comes from an 1881 municipal ordinance, as cited in Susan M. Schweik’s
The Ugly Laws: Disability in Public
(NYU Press). Chicago was the last city to repeal its Ugly Law in 1974.

    â€œHow to Treat Flowers” quotes Spinoza’s
Ethics
, Part III, Prop. 59, as translated by Edwin Curley (Penguin Classics), and draws on C. S. Lewis’ chapter “Time and Beyond Time” from
Mere Christianity
(HarperCollins).

    â€œAffairs”: This is a substitution poem based on Austin Wright’s “Recalcitrance in the Short Story,” from the anthology
Short Story Theory at a Crossroads
, edited by Susan Lohafer (LSU Press). “Affairs” has been substituted for “recalcitrance.”

    â€œGo On High Ship”: Geoffrey Grigson named Wallace Stevens “The Stuffed Goldfinch” for an eponymous review in
New Verse
.

    â€œElegy for Zahra Baker” engages with the case of Zahra Baker whose remains were found scattered across Caldwell County, North Carolina, in 2010.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

    Thanks to the editors of these journals where the poems first appeared:

    Badlands
: “Poem for His Girl”;
    Cave Wall
: “Go On High Ship”;
    Dossier
: “Be Not Far From Me”;
    Failbetter
: “How to Treat Flowers”;
    Fairy Tale Review
: “Elegy for Zahra Baker”;
    Forklift, Ohio
: “Tiny and Courageous Finches”;
    LIT
: “Goodbyes”;
    Mayday
: “Marcel Addresses Kate”;
    Michigan Quarterly Review
: “Up Late and Likewise”;
    The Missouri Review
: “Once I thought I was going to die in the desert without knowing who I was” and “For Big Logos, in Hopes He Will Write Poems Again”;
    New Ohio Review
: “The Ugly Law”;
    Pax Americana
: “Affairs” and “Decent Recipe for Tilapia”;
    PEN American Poetry Series
: “Poem for His Ex”;
    Pleiades
: “I’ve Been Waiting All Night”;
    Tin House
: “Semi Semi Dash”;
    Wordgathering
: “Café Loop”.

    Thanks to Peter Conners, Laure-Anne Bosselaar, and Michael Blumenthal, to the ghost of Isabella Gardner, and to the BOA staff. Thanks to the Fulbright Program, the Universidad de Buenos Aires, and Delfina Muschietti for the fellowship and friendship. Thanks to Ana Lopez at the Patagonia Spanish School for making Ushuaia a less lonely place to live. Thanks to Clemson University, the Fine Arts Work Center, and the University of Cincinnati for grants and residencies to support these poems.

    Thanks to these writers for their insights on the manuscript: Tom Bissell, Sarah Blackman, Don Bogen, Jim Cummins, John Drury, Tim Earley, Okla Elliott, Michael Griffith, Joanie Mackowski, Kristi Maxwell, Bo McGuire, Catherine Paul, Michelle