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I'd like to read
two poems about--

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excuse me.

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If I shake a little, it's just I
have an electric motor attached

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to me.

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These are two poems about
someone who had died.

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This poem for Carol
Marcus, 1946 to 1969.

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The poem is called
"Sleeping on Doors."

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It's an odd title,
but the way it

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works out in the poem is
trying to get between the--

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it's as if death is another
universe and there's a--

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we wish there were a
doorway between the two.

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Sort of sleeping on that door.

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"Sleeping on Doors."

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"If we could only
see further, we

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could look through
to the other side.

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Such impossibilities, the
death of a sister in August,

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leave us standing in
a kingdom of tongues

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without mouths, without even
silence to contain our doubts.

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When we sigh, we
encounter her breathing.

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To each ghost, we assign
lamentations like zeros,

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like seeds.

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We would people whole
accessible universes

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with our need, entrances, exits,
as if we could accept loss

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forever.

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Tonight is the first
closed door, the stone.

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And we lie down on it, sleep
on the door, on the door,

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sleep on the door, a way of
seeing past the darkness,

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as though we could come
and go, as we please."

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