WEBVTT

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I'd like to read a
poem for Joy Harjo.

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But a couple of weeks
before I came here to read,

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I dreamt that I was
reading and that I

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had lost track of
my poems and then

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a woman stood up
from the audience

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and started playing an
instrument that looked

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like a clarinet but was not.

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And I just found out that
Joy plays soprano sax so.

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I tried I tried playing the
saxophone for a few years,

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but it requires a discipline
that was beyond my means

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at the time.

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So it taught me something.

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This is one of the
poems that it taught me.

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It's called "If I Yes".

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If I yes to be carried,
good luck of skin.

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Charmed roadside noise,
not to be plucked.

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Turn to me.

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As crows turn in
mid-flight and stretch

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an ocean over that curve
of shoulder with your eye.

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Sheer luck in Aries,
rebellious, mellifluous.

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Insist on taking out the thorn.

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Let me be carried,
ribbon-like from your tongue,

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as if by language, fabulous, a
fathomless interruption for it

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is both a tingling and a light.

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The difference is
feeling the simultaneous

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and scribe the soul.

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It will become very quiet.

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Encourage it.

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You have an eloquent tongue.

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Thrum it and it will leap
to its massive shudder.

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What the exterior beckons,
shape, note, singing, precise,

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plant, starlight in
the mountainous psalm.

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Grow up quick of butterfly
colored wing-spreading eye.

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And noise cracks and
creaks and is a nonsense.

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And noise is a nonsense,
cracks and creaks.

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Gloss shadow, mental stills
tarot block on block,

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lake on lake, marble, marble.

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Of women saturated and rich.

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I have never seen
you so happy and it

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was good seeing you, my shells.

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My shy girls.

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Give me a shadow,
touch me with light.

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The dream of my life
is to throw myself.

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The color of war holds people.

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I want to eat my life.

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Beauty, monument, design.

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If I'm not up by
11:30 don't wake me.

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