Summary

In "Thanksgiving 2006" the speaker is friendless and alone in Brooklyn on Thanksgiving. They walk down the street and encounter a man smoking on a stoop, whose mouth lets them "reenter/ this city" (31). The speaker vows that they will be "every animal" the man leaves behind (31).

"Homewrecker" describes an early relationship between the speaker and a boy. The two danced in the boy's mother's dresses, and hid from his father's tantrums. Their relationship is described both with joyous nostalgia, and with sinister images of death.

"Of Thee I Sing" describes John F. Kennedy's assassination from the perspective of Jackie Kennedy. Jackie repeats that she loves her country throughout the poem as she watches her husband be shot in the head, and becomes covered in his blood. She mourns the loss of her and her husband's "American dreams" (34).

The speaker in "Because It's Summer" tells...