>> Ok. There's other stories that I have to read, but I think I'm going to ask
if anybody has a request as my last thing to read.
Does anybody have something they would like me to read that you know of that's your favorite?
Leyla?
Ok.
This is for you.
The poem is called Interface and it's on page --
What page is it on?
One forty eight, for those of you who want to follow me to see that I read correctly.
You will find that, as I read, every time I read a poem, I change it slightly.
Sometimes I carry the pen with me and, as I'm reading, I'm --
But I felt I was going too far, so I stopped doing it.
Now I just change the words orally.
Interface.
She'd always been there, occupying the same room.
It was only when I looked at the edges of things,
my eyes going wide, watering, objects blurring.
Where before there'd only been empty space, I sensed layers
and layers felt the air in the room thicken.
Behind my eyelids, the white flash, a thin noise, that's when I could see her.
Once, I accidentally ran my arm through her body, felt heat on one side of my face.
She wasn't solid.
The shock pushed me against the wall,
a torrent of day swept past me before I tried to see her again.
She had never wanted to be flesh, she told me, until she met me.
At first, it was hard to stay on the border between the physical world and hers.
It was only there, at the interface, that we could see each other.
See? We wanted to touch.
I wish I could become pulsing color, pure sound, bodiless as she.
It was impossible, she said, for humans to become liminal.
What does it feel like, she asked, to inhabit flesh,
to wear blood like threads constantly running?
I would lie on the bed talking, she would hover over me.
Did I say talk?
We did not use words.
I pushed my thoughts towards, towards her.
Her voice was a breath of air stirring my hair, filling my head.
Once Lupe, my roommate, walked right through her, dangling the car keys.
I felt Leyla shiver, a pure -- I named her Leyla, a pure sound.
I don't know when I noticed that she began to glow,
to look more substantial than the blurred furniture.
It was then I felt a slight touch, her hand, a tendril of fog on the sheets
where she'd lain, a slight crease, a dampness, a smell between candles and skin.
You're changing, I told her.
A yearning deluged me.
Her yearning.
That's when I knew she wanted to be flesh.
She stayed insubstantial day after day.
So I tried to blur my borders to float, become pure sound,
but my body seemed heavier and more inert.
I remember when she changed.
I could hear the faraway slough of traffic on the Brooklyn Queens Expressway.
The people downstairs were playing salsa.
We lay enclosed by margins, hymns, where only we existed.
She was stroking, stroking my arms, my legs,
marveling at their solidity, the warmth of my flesh smell.
When I touched her fog, she felt like dense fog, the color of smoke.
She glowed.
My hands paled, then gleamed as I moved them over her smoke fog pressing against my eyelids,
my mouth, ears, nostrils, navel.
A cool tendril pressing between my legs, entering.
Her finger, I thought.
But it went on and on.
At the same time, an icing has touched my anus and she was
in and in and in, my mouth opening.
I wasn't scared, just astonished.
Rain drummed against my spine, turned to steam as it rushed through my veins.
Light flickered over me from toe to crown.
Looking down my body, I saw her forearm, elbow and hand sticking out of my stomach.
Saw her hand slide in.
I wanted no food, no water, nothing.
Just her pure light sound inside me.
My roommate thought I was having an affair.
I was radiant, she said.
Leyla had begun to swell.
I started hurting a little.
When I started cramping, she pushed out her fingers, forearm, shoulder.
Then she stood before me.
Fragile skin, sinews, tender as baby birds and as transparent.
She, who had never eaten, began to hunger.
I held a cup of milk to her mouth, put her hand on my throat, made swallowing sounds.
I spooned mashed banana into her bird mouth, hid the baby food under the bed.
One day, my roommate asked who was staying in my room.
She'd heard movements.
A friend recovering from a contagious skin disease, I said.
She ran out saying I'm going to the Cape indefinitely.
See you.
We had the house to ourselves.
I taught her how to clean herself, to flush.
She would stand before the mirror, watching her ears long
and diaphanous, began to get smaller, thicker.
She spent a lot of time at the window.
Once I caught her imitating the shuffle of the bag lady.
No, like this, I told her.
Head up, shoulders back.
I brought the TV in-- I brought in the TV.
This is how humans love, hate, I said.
Once we sat on the stoop watching a neighbor sweep the sidewalk.
Hello? He yelled.
Hello, I yelled back.
Hey-o, she whispered.
Watch my lips, Leyla.
Say it, Leyla.
Good, I love you.
Ah, uf, uh, she said.
Soon Leyla could pass, go for milk at the bodega, count change,
but no matter how passionately we made love, it was never like before.
She'd taken on skin and bone.
Do you ever want to go back?
I asked her.
No, it's slower here.
I like that.
I hate summers in New York City, I told her.
I wish it was winter already.
The temperature dropped 10 degrees, 20 and when a chill wind began to blow in Brooklyn,
I told her to stop messing with the cycles that affected others.
I watched what I said and led Leyla run the place.
She had snow in the living room, a tree in the bathtub -
Nights, I lit the illegal fireplace.
Once when reaching toward a high shelf, I wished I was taller.
When my head touched the ceiling, I had to yell at her to stop.
Reverse.
How do you do it?
I asked her.
You do it too, she said.
My specie just does it faster, instantly, merely by thinking it.
The first time she rode the subway, I had to drag her out.
I suppose it was the noise, the colors flashing by, the odd people that held her gaze.
I had to do a gig in LA, speak at a conference, was short on cash, but she wanted to come.
She walked past the flight attendants, didn't even have to hide in the lavatory.
She laughed.
At my amazement, said humans only saw what they were told to see.
Last Christmas, I took her home to Texas.
Mom liked her.
Is she a les?
My brothers asked.
I said no, just an alien.
Leyla laughed.
Thank you.