I've been working a lot on ghazals.
I'm really in the form.
I like to stay to it, I like to break it.
I think part of my experience being a construction worker
and electrician, you have to follow code and form,
or shit burns down and falls apart.
Poems, you can let it fall apart, and whatever.
Nobody cares.
But I'm working with ghazals lately,
so I'm going to read you three of those
and then some newer stuff for a new collection
that I'm working on.
I think I have a title, but I'm not sure.
But I won't share it anyway.
[LAUGHTER]
Don't ask, and don't hug.
[LAUGHTER]
Hug a 3-foot radius.
Tercets, three feet.
[LAUGHTER]
These ghazals don't have titles.
Traditionally, ghazals don't.
They have numbers attributed to them, but at this point,
they're sort of arbitrary.
"Had you bothered to ask, we would have told you
how the world ended.
Morning, a covey drowned in the pool,
a simple miscalculation ended.
'Called me whore.'
Mom recalls her dad's words after being
crowned beauty queen.
She was cursed, spit on.
None of that approximates to her spirit ended.
A frosted matutunal clearing of bronze barked ponderosas
meth cut blow, half cash, half pawn.
Sun prisms through pine needles, siblings, clarity ended.
Your house is hidden from me.
On densely forested streets, I never exited my truck.
I'm thirsty after manual labor, want a closed curtain,
this long-haul tragedy ended.
Straight-fed cats shit and piss, litter box the front yard.
I'd think to guillotine and stake their heads,
but they stalk and hiss as a family.
My tiny Dracula dreams ended.
This is me, Bojan, and I'm here.
Early December, I've shed the skins
of kinship and brotherhood, the snapdragons and cholla
I planted reminders of deathly heat ended."