WEBVTT

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OK, this is called
"You and the Breast."

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OK, so I wrote this--

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I was at an artist residency.

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And when they showed me my
room, they told me this is--

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so this is where Philip Roth
wrote his famous short story

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"The Breast."

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I was like, I never
read that story.

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[LAUGHTER]

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And so I said, well, you know,
I'm here to do other things.

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[LAUGHTER]

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So that is not my main concern.

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But then by the second
day, I'm looking

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at this turret for
hours and hours

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because the turret is
right above the desk.

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And so I decided
to read the story

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and then proceeded to
spend half of my time

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at this artist residency
writing this poem.

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[CHUCKLING]

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It's called "You
and the Breast."

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By now you know the story--

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an English professor awakens
to find, like Kafka's Gregor,

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that he has turned into
something unthinkable,

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something so unlike who he was.

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In his case not a
beetle but a breast.

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Young, perfectly round,
its nipple erect.

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What if he had found himself
instead a breast at ease

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in middle age, the nipple
sure of its opinion

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but not in constant
need to give it?

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[LAUGHTER]

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In this room with a turret,
where the story was written,

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you are not turned on,
but troubled by the memory

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of your mother in her
last years pushed around

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in a wheelchair
entirely braless.

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Did it feel like
freedom or resignation

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to no longer have to roust
the girls up and about,

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or make them unwilling
interlocutors?

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You think for the nursing home
this was mainly convenience.

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With so much to do, why
harness old women who've

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wandered off a darkened stage?

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Your mother who never answered
the door without a girdle,

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much less a bra.

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What if the breast had
been delicate and shallow,

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a bead of water trembling on
the petal of a thirsty cactus?

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Flat as a mesa,
scarred like an arroyo?

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Or why not two breasts,
one a full cup larger

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than the other
from having nursed

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too long in the same
position while writing

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recommendation letters?

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You lean back in
your chair and stare

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at the ceiling above the
desk, its concentric circles

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punctuated in the middle by
a round light fixture that

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teardrops into a nipple,
and around the nipple

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a ragged areola of insects drawn
nightly to its luminous glands.

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One understands when
entering a room that others

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have been there before you.

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But this room is
never just itself.

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It is always a story that
hovers over your own.

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What if the nipple
had sprouted a hair

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and, given the professor's
lack of hands, remained forever

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unplucked?

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What if the nipple had
been inverted and not,

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as the story goes, phallic?

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A breast leaking milk,
its infected ducts

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hard and throbbing
under a cabbage leaf?

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The domed ceiling has two cracks
like veins under pale skin.

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On the roof, where the pointed
end of the turret lives,

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is another breast whose
nipple pulls energy

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from the center of the
desk to its weathervane.

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It's hard to get a
signal beneath it.

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You have to sit
on the bed to text

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a friend whose father
died yesterday.

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I didn't get a chance to
say goodbye, she writes.

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And, fuck capitalism.

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Perfectly framed by
the window to your left

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is a long thin tree
among a thicket.

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It pushes proudly
from its trunk what

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looks like a breast, because
now everything does, but is

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actually a scar
over a wound called

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a burl, the result of
some type of stress--

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injury, virus, fungus.

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Valued for its beauty,
this type of scar

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is often poached, destroying the
tree it was trying to protect.

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A Redwood can sprout another
Redwood from its burl

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if it thinks it might die.

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The women in your family,
their breasts at any age fall

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sideward.

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They never point
to future, or sky,

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but each, after sex, are
waterfalls into canyons.

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