This poem was reproduced.
It's a brand new poem from "Oceanic," my next collection.
And it's reproduced as a broadside for the--
I think it was from the Whitman Circle.
Is that right?
So I also just got to see that in person.
I'm so excited for that.
It's beautiful.
Thank you.
I love letterpress.
And this is called "Naming the Heartbeats."
I have become the person who says "darling,"
who says "sugar pie," "honey bunch," "snuggle bear,"
and that's just for my children.
What I call my husband is unprintable.
You're welcome.
I am his sweetheart and finally, finally I
answer to his call and his alone.
Animals are named for people, places,
or perhaps a little Latin.
Plants invite names for colors or plant parts.
When you get a group of heartbeats together,
you get names that call out into the evening's first radiance
of planets, a quiver of cobras, a maelstrom of salamanders,
and an audience of squid, or an ostentation of peacocks.
But what is it called when creatures on earth
curl and sleep, when shadows of moons
we don't yet know brush across our faces?
And what is the name for the movement we make when we wake,
swiping hand, or claw, or wing across our faces,
like trying to remember a path or a river
we've only visited just in our dreams.