WEBVTT

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As I meant-- as I said
earlier, for a number of years,

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I could not write
poems about myself

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for one reason or another.

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But for the last
two or three years,

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I've had kind of a
seizure of writing

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nothing else but
autobiographical poems,

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and I'd like to read
some of them to you now.

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I'd like to begin by reading
a poem about puberty,

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which is a terrible time
in any young person's life.

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It's a very short poem.

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When I was a young--
a little boy,

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I used to walk home from school
past this dry cleaning factory,

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and the ladies generally
in the spring would--

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working in the place
would entertain me.

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And this is a poem
about that business.

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It's called "One for the
Ladies at the Troy Laundry Who

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Cooled Themselves for Zimmer."

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"The ladies at the Troy
Laundry pressed and pressed

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in the warm fog of their labor.

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They cooled themselves
at the windows,

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the steam rising from
their gibbous skins

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as I dawdled home from school.

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In warmer weather,
they wore no blouses,

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and if I fought the crumbling
coke pile to the top,

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they laughed and waved at
me, billowy from their irons.

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Oh man, the ladies
at the Troy Laundry

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smelled like cod
fish out of water,

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and yet the very fur
within their armpits

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made me rise
wondering and small."

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[LAUGHTER]

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That is an awful
time for a person.

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It really is.

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[LAUGHTER]

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