Alix Anne Shaw is the author of three full-length poetry collections: Rough Ground (Etruscan 2018), Dido in Winter (Persea 2014), and Undertow (Persea 2007), winner of the Lexi Rudnitsky Poetry Prize. Her poems and reviews have appeared in journals including Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, Harvard Review, Black Warrior Review, and New American Writing. She is also a visual artist. Her sculpture, writing, and performance-based work can be viewed online at www.anneshaw.org and anneshaw.carbonmade.com.

Prologue A Possible Willow A Bloody Wilderness A new bruise cannot be discovered later. No body can be separate from its bruise. Forensic scene 1 Bodies are simple. Rainy or green Forensic scene 2 A blinding The fullness of a damp day is the willow. We picture facts to ourselves. Peacock theory If a sky is to be a peacock As a peacock recites its consolation into a clamoring space Forest A logical picture of sky is a bird. A nest concealed in an ordinary tree No difference can be discerned between a nest and a branch. N E S T (n.) Aftermath [ ] [ ] Forensic evidence Contingent [ ] [ ] What can be distinguished in a wilderness of sound [ ] City A labyrinth of houses In the logic of depiction What is the case if it rains Divisions that one cannot get away from A blinding Reality is compared with a proposition. A forest does not result in forest-houses. Cannot be said, it A rough equivalence [ ] Notes for a dream 1 Running or falling Accounting A priori Notes for a dream 2 A wilderness of translation A name is not replaceable with any other name. Anamnesis A set of wild rains What it is The possible combinations of n binary states is equal to the history of a house. What she holds to be true of a house Tautologies and Contradictions [ ] (A stuttering of branches) As two arrows might go out in opposite directions and might meet. The willow's dreams determine the range of leaves it opens to the sky /Notes for a dream 3 W I L L O W (n.) The truth of a possible nest To occupy a willow [ ] The disintegration of signs The disintegration of signs The d s ntegrat on of s gns The d tegrat o of g What crouches in the city cannot be pressed from it. Questions of a House An argument Rain, rain, rain, rain. A set of propositions An empty superstition A certainty No one thing A series of successive applications A bracketed expression The willow alters all that is the case. Notes for a dream 4 Truth operations / The most real day A primitive sign [ ] [ ] Three kinds of description Half life Negation of a damp day [ ] A person is equivalent to fire. Axiom mundi Insomnia / New Logic A night scene Falling from An amended explanation as one climbs upon the house An amended notation To see what is pressed from darkness. In case of no expanse. A logical progression / Rules that deal with signs A method of being awake Substitution (An archway rife with birds, a fence, a moving train) (A)symmetry / Internal ground The simplest procedure