Chapter 1
A small tree: "The trick is not to neglect it just enough / but to deny it just enough"
What is bonsai?
The season: "Tell yourself / as it gets cold and gray falls from the air / that you will go on"
What is winter?
The bird in "The World is Too Huge to Grasp": "It's like watching really beautiful gods / moving within a universe / that other, taller gods built for them"
What are penguins?
In "Hide and Seek," Fiona Benson uses the Hebrew word Sho'ah for this.
What is the Holocaust?
In one poem by Naomi Shihab Nye, a brother and sister use this to communicate before falling asleep.
What is a (supple) cord?
"If Gods Wills it" in Arabic
What is Insa'Allah?
The season: "I walked to the top of the old mining road / to hear all the slow loosening and letting go".
What is spring?
The drink you're asked to get "since you're up..."
What is (well) water?
The title of this Doireann Ni Ghriofa's poem compares getting to know her newborn to this children's challenging toy.
What is a jigsaw puzzle?
The person to the speaker: "He never taught me how to hold / a pair of clippers. I never saw him / dab cologne on his cheeks."
Who is his dad?
Two things the old Palestinian woman has in her bag in "Gate A-4"
What are mamool cookies and a plant?
A word that completes the blank: "The notion, for instance, / that happiness is mild and enduring, / something like a southern climate ' instead of a ____ of lightning / that leaves scars / cherished a lifetime."
What is "bolt"?
The fruit: "lined up in bellied jars on / shelves and set aside for darkness, stored for harsher days."
What is breastfeed?
The people: "Arranged, like faithful paladins, / are half a dozen bits and scraps / from those who took a turn, then split"
Who are ex-boyfriends?
Where the speaker works in "Rednecks."
What is a gas station?
The famous son in "Failing and Flying"
Who is Icarus?
The fruit: "To come to the kitchen / and peel a little basketball / for breakfast".
What is grapefruit?
Amphibian, worm, chick, piglet, mole, and cat--all animals used to describe this.
What is a baby?
Fill in the blank: "It is both a freedom and a prison, to be ________ / by her as she towers over me as thin as a sequin / in her doc martens and her pretty skirt / because just as I work out how to be a mother / she stops being a child."
What is "outgrown"?
Where "Gate C22" takes place...it's the kissing one.
What is the Portland Airport?
The bunch of this vegetables, wrapped in two purple elastic bands, that brings the speaker happiness in "Happiness."
What is asparagus?
Paul's Fish Fry in Bennington in this state.
What is Vermont?
How old Sharon Olds's "miscarried one" is now.
What is thirty?
What is causing the pain: "You know how it happens: the first wince, ' the lingering sting. It sharpens, deepens / until the pain won't let you sleep and you find yourself / in a waiting room, fingernails pinched into slick palms."
What is a tooth?