Thank you.
Thank you, Alice.
Thank you, everyone, for coming.
Oh, OK, we're reading out in the open.
Is that right?
OK, thank you, the Poetry Center and everyone
involved bringing me here.
I met so many people to thank.
Patrick--
Can you turn it up?
Hi.
Can you speak a little closer?
OK, how about that?
We're really intimate.
OK.
You got it.
Thank you.
I thought I knew what I was going to read,
but I keep changing my mind.
I'm going to just work my way and try
to feel my way through this.
I'm going to read some new poems.
I'm still revising these.
I think these were meant to be, maybe, whispered.
I don't know if I can pull that off.
Can you hear this?
Yes.
"Why are you crying?
My father asked, lifting me out of my small bed
and that recurring dream that began when I started speaking
sentences in a second language.
There were two languages in that house.
Three, if you count the unspoken between a father and a son.
If you loved me, you'd never die, I answered him.
And he laughed and kissed me all over my face and neck.
And I didn't know what I'd said or done
to bring him so much pleasure.
Oh, sweetness, he said, have you already forgotten
everything I told you?
And I stopped my sobbing and listened to his breathing come
to me in whispers, and fell asleep on his shoulder,
uncomprehending, and wake now a man,
still listening, my sleep sometimes still
infringed upon, not by dreams of loved ones disappearing,
but dead ones come back strong, loved, and loving.
Each year, I understand better what was ministered to me.
First, by him over and over each night before sleep,
that man whose own sleep was so often
broken by a child's growing wise to death
in the middle of the night, and later, self-administered,
after my father stopped speaking, forever.
Why are you crying?
He asks now, lifting me.
And, in our third language, he speaks, all breath.
Have you forgotten?
Time is your true body, and the years are your limbs.
Have you forgotten?
Death is an employee whose trade is trick sleeves
and fake interiors.
That assistant you pay each day misdirects you,
repeating those powerful spells of here
and there, this and that, before and after.
You must have utterly forgotten fire, water, earth, and air
are your true ancestors.
In their likeness, mind and body consume and shine,
heart and soul refract, and all compass points
are imprinted in you, who empty and fill,
holding all and keeping nothing.
Desire is fire's longing for the wood.
Joy is water's seeking its own plumb.
Grief is earth's remembering its true weight.
Freedom is air's omnipresence.
Remember?
When these joined, you were born.
When these separate, you'll be restored
to burning, quickening, brooding, and true breathing.
My love for you is the ancestors convening.
Your love for me is the ancestors adjourning
to seek their source.
My love for you, your love for me.
My love, your love.
What can only be received as a gift cannot be possessed.
But you must have forgotten.
Why else would you stand at this fork in your life,
weeping like a heartbroken child?"