WEBVTT

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For something which may one
in the '90s, or in the next

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1,000--

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in the year 20,000 something,
our way of publication

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is very slow.

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We wait for a book
for four years

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or three years or something.

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It may be shortened by now.

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So I intend to--

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a series of poems which
describe some syndromes,

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because of the
official-- the script

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denotation of some
medical syndromes

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are very metaphorical.

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They're very imaginative.

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We have a green stick
syndrome, which is--

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it is funny-- which is a
fracture of a child's bones.

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Green stink syndrome.

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We have a vanishing lung
syndrome, which is lovely.

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The syndrome is not lovely,
but the description is lovely.

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Really it's just
[INAUDIBLE] emphysema

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and the lung just disappears.

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And this is another
legitimate syndrome--

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"Crush Syndrome."

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"Once when in winter dark I was
cleaning the concrete mixer,

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its cog wheels like the teeth
of the bald rat of Ibadan,

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snapped up the glove
with the hand inside.

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The finger bones
said a few things

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you don't hear very often,
and then it grew quiet,

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because even the rat panicked.

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In that moment, I
realized I had a soul.

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It was soft, black
with red stripes,

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and it wanted to be
wrapped in gauze.

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I put it beside me on
the seat and steered

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with the healthy hand.

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At the clinic,
during the injections

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of local anesthetic
and the stitching,

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the soul held ferally
with its mandibles

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to the knob of the table.

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It was now a whitish crystal,
and had a grasshopper's head.

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The fingers healed.

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The soul turned at first
to granulation tissue,

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and later a scar,
hardly visible."

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