Introduction: Of memory and revision / Foreword / Child-free / Barbed wire / I, too, am the mother / The unmother / Dialogue between two women at the clinic / Motherhood / First journey / Daystar / My mother's clothes / Washer woman / Tax deadline / Fixing face / [Untitled] / Milk bath / Horse and carriage on the plaza / A slip into history / My face / blk(s) / The night after you have been fired from your job / A burning lesson / She was my first / Poem for Gwendolyn Brooks on her centennial birthday

Sister Flossie's jam / Recipe / Radio / For the lover who eats my poems... / To be in love / To be / Knife in the wall / Chalk / When your silence will not save you / Fine art school / Combatives / Stay / Abracadabra / Psalm 23 at 15 / Visitation one / Dog in a dead man's house / Babes / On Spring / Bitter winter / Suicide one / Lovely love / Sweet stalk / Genetic codes / The Samaritan woman / Look behind / Deuce and a quarter / Convenience / Anacostia suite / Sold to the man with the mouth / Kenny's friend / Run Johnny run / Foun(d) poem / Silly stories / Dying of laughter / Sleep smoking / Five belly buttons / Yaakov's jackets / The hammers / Mama Gwendolyn kiss (is) Uncle Ruckus on de forehead / Civility / Tribal differences / Players online dating service / Mr. Oscar Brown Jr. goes to heaven / Looking for Venture Smith / Sonnet for Gordon Parks / Oriki for John Oliver Killens

Remembering Gwendolyn Brooks / Quatrain for Emmett Till/Trayvon Martin/Michael Brown/LaQuan McDonald / Many sons, many mothers / A depraved indifference 2 human life / The short answer / A neighborhood boy / Rite of passag / We real / Roots / News item : police seek African-American man / History of static / East Texas blues / Robert's Hill : San Augustine, Texas / We real / WWW2015 / The tragedies / Skin / Keloid cells / Landscape with chalk-marked silhouette / Everyday horrors / When racism dies / Overheard at tea, near Kensington and DeVeers, London / A feast of whispers / In praise of wisdom / Halloween / Who needs the stars if the full moon loves you? / Prayer for Jordan / The corner / A deaf old lady / Street woman / Black woman in Russia / Artwork gallery ; Recollections / Urban couple / The tenant / Meanwhile, a Lawndale girl burns cornbread / R. Taylor's Project girl / Final frontier / Gwendolyn Brooks stands in the Mecca / The last supper / Second Ave. ceiling / Steel canary / Crime in Bluesville / Eating in the after life / Hotel Hades / Lincoln Cemetery / The blinking apple / & later / Geometry / Cedar / Fun in the backyard / Day 4, somewhere between Athens and Serifos, Greece / June 9, Serifos, Greece / Blackbirding / Seven years

Testifying / Language of the unheard / Jazz June / To the recorder of history / A note on Gwendolyn Brooks / Reading Gwendolyn Brooks / Letter to Gwendolyn Brooks / Nobody knows my name / A haiku for Gwendolyn Brooks / Journaling with Gwendolyn Brooks Kwansaba-style 2016 : a pastiche of poetic reports on her life & works / The weight of the word / Baggage / Smolder / Artist statements. Anecdote / Reflections : experiencing Gwendolyn Brooks / Reflection / Gwendolyn Brooks reminiscence / Being born into Brooks / Description of portrait of Gwendolyn Brooks / My Gwendolyn Brooks experience / Remembrance / Finding my own sunset and thoughts on reading Gwendolyn Brooks / My first contact with Gwendolyn Brook / A slice of prose for Gwendolyn Brooks, poet / To make a thing sing and mean : reflections on Gwendolyn Brooks / Wordweaver (for Gwendolyn Brooks) / A Bluesviile tribute for Gwendolyn Brooks / Brooks biography. We remember Sunday : portrait of the artist as an ancestor / Brooks bibliography. Gwendolyn Brooks : a selected bibliography 1979-2015