I was taught-- who was I?
I met someone in the room earlier.
I came without my poems so I had a moment of freak out.
And as I was printing them someone
was talking about animal poems.
That they were in a class reading animal poems.
So I'm going to read a couple of animal poems.
But maybe I'll read a--
maybe I should give us a happy poem.
I've also been writing a series of love poems.
We talked a little bit about this in the class today.
It was a really great discussion in the class.
The students were quite amazing.
You want to take that again?
You know, pick my chin up.
Do you have the Mojave app that takes the chin away?
That's what you need on that one.
I almost got offended when Larry said
I was going to be rounding out the reading.
Because I thought he was talking about my cheeks.
But I don't think he was.
But I'm always struck by our hands.
We take them so for granted.
But if you look at your hands, like, every good thing
that comes to us it's initiated by our hands.
You know when you meet somebody, you
reach out to touch somebody, you pick something up.
You know, but also every bad thing that we do
is in the same way initiated by your hands.
You know, like whether it's a trigger or to hit somebody
or to push somebody away.
And I'm just--
I don't know, I'm always a little bit
overwhelmed and overcome by that idea
that we carry these things around with us
and what they're capable of.
"These Hands If Not Gods."
Haven't they moved like rivers, like glory,
like light over the seven days of your body.
And wasn't that good?
Them at your hips?
Isn't this what God felt when he pressed together
the first beloved.
Everything.
Fever.
Vapor.
Atman.
Pulses.
Finally a sin worth hurting for.
Finally a sweet.
A you are mine.
It is hard not to have faith in this.
From the blue, brown clay of night
these two potters crushed and smoothed you into being.
Grind then curve, built your form up.
Atlas of bone.
Fields of muscle.
One breast a fig tree.
The other a nightingale both morning and evening.
Oh the beautiful making they do.
Of trigger and carve, suffering and stars.
Aren't they too the dark carpenters
of your small church?
Have they not burned on the altar of your belly,
eaten the bread of your thighs, broke you to wine, to ichor,
to nectareous feast?
Haven't they riveted your wrists?
Haven't they had you at your knees?
And when these hands touched your throat,
showed you how to take the apple and the rib.
How to slip a thumb into your mouth and taste it all.
Didn't you sing out their 99 names?
Zahir, Aleph, Hand's-time-seven, Sphinx, Leonids, locomotora,
Rubidium, August, and September.
And when you cried out, "Oh Prometheans,"
didn't they bring fire?
These hands, if not Gods, then why when you have come to me
and I have returned you to that from which you came.
Bright mud.
Mineral salt. Why then do you whisper, "Oh my Hecatonchire.
My Centimani.
My hundred handed one?"