After the first lightning -- The summer of black widows -- Defending Walt Whitman -- Mistranslation of a traditional Spokane Indian song -- Glossary of a powwow -- The first and last ghost dance of Lester FallsApart -- That place where ghosts of salmon jump -- Song of ourself -- Why we play basketball -- Haibun -- Grandmother, porcupine, traffic -- Totem sonnets -- When I was my father I sang love songs to my son -- Father and farther -- Diabetes -- Death of the landlord -- Elegies -- Fire as verb and noun -- Sonnet: tattoo tears -- Sister fire, brother smoke.

The lover of maps -- How we learn to say "mouth" and "hand" and "small of back" -- Marriage -- Grand entry -- Drum as love, fear, and prayer -- Last will and testament -- Harmful jazz -- Owl dancing with Fred Astaire -- Airplane -- Prayer animals -- How to remodel the interior of a Catholic church -- Capital punishment -- Tourists -- How to write the great American Indian novel -- The exaggeration of despair -- The powwow at the end of the world -- What we notice, what we miss.

The Sasquatch poems -- Introduction to Western civilization -- After the trial of Hamlet, Chicago, 1994 -- Inside Dachau -- Reading Harvey Shapiro's poetry while standing in line to see Tom Hanks in Apollo 13 -- Things (for an Indian) to do in New York (City) -- Going to the movies with Geronimo's wife -- The museum of tolerance -- Airplane, airport, airline, air in the bottom of the ninth inning -- Bob's Coney Island.