WEBVTT

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And my new book is
called Flood Song.

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And yeah.

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It's fun.

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It's a book that took a while.

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And I carried it around
with me in my back pocket,

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until it grew into
several manuscripts

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all over the country.

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And it finally was ready
to be published in October

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of the previous year.

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And so this is a journey inside
someplace that wants a name,

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but it's also a flood.

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tó tó tó tó tó

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tó tó tó tó

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I bite my eyes shut
between these songs.

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They are the sounds of
blackened insect husks folded

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over elk teeth in
a tin can, they

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are gull wings fattening on cold
air flapping in a paper suck

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on the chlorine-stained floor.

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They curl in corners,
spiked and black-thatched,

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stomp across the
living room ceiling,

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paint our stems with
sand in the kitchen sink.

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They speak a double helix,
zigzag a tree trunk,

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bark the tips of its
leaves with cracked amber--

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they plant shouts-- they
plant whispers where

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shouts incinerates into hisses.

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Stepping through the
drum's vibration,

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I hear gasoline
trickle alongside

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the fenced-in panorama of
the reed we climbed in from

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and slide my hands into
shoes of ocean water.

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I step onto the gravel path of
swans paved across lake scent,

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wrap this blank page around
the exclamation point

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slammed between us.

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The storm lying
outside its fetal shell

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folds back its antelope ears
and hears its heart pounding

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through powdery earth
underneath dancers flecking dust

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from their ankles to
thunder into rain.

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I am unable to pry my fingers
from the axe unable to utter

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a word without grandfather's
accent rippling

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around the stone flung
into his thinning mattress.

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Years before, he would
have named this season

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by flattening a field
where grasshoppers

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jumped into black smoke.

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A crow snaps its beak
over and over again--

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the past is a blurry splotch
of red crosshatched with neon

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light; on the drive south,
windows pushed down,

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you scoop pellets of canned air
and ocean across sand dunes,

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across the waning lick of
moonlight on the dashboard

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to crease the horizon between
petals of carved snow.

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A red-tail hawk scrapes the
sandstone wall with its beak.

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A shower of sparks skates
across the morning sky.

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You think this bottle
will open a canyon wall

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and light a trail
trampled by gloved hands

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as you inhale earth, wind,
water, through the gasoline

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nozzle at trail's end,
a flint spear driven

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into the key switch.

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You think you can return to that
place where your mother held

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her sleeves above the rising
tides saying 'We are here again

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on the road covered
with television snow;

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we are here again the
song has thudded.'

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Flicking off the light switch.

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Lichen buds the curved
creases of a mind pondering

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the mesquite tree's
dull ache as it

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gathers its leaves around
clouds of spotted doves--

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calling them in rows of twelve
back from their winter sleep.

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Doves' eyes black as
nightfall shiver on the foam

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coasts of an arctic dream where
whale ribs clasp and fasten you

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to the language of shifting ice.

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Seeing into those eyes you
uncoil their telephone wires,

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gather their inaudible lions
with plastic forks, tongue

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their salty ribbons,
and untie their weedy

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stems from your prickly fingers.

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You stop to wonder what like
sounds like when held under

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glacier water, how Ná ha kos
feels under the weight of all

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that loss.

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I cover my eyes with
electrical wires,

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and see yellow dawn
eclipse Stop signs,

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turn green and screech
into phosphorescence.

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Each flickering finger--
a memory of a flashing

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yellow sign, blinks between
charcoal sheets of monsoon rain

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then slices through the
thawing of our hunger

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with the cracked eaves
of a shattered house.

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Its autobiographical muscle--
stringing trees into a forest,

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convulses, only to be flattened
under its metallic leaves

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and sold as bricks for
its basement of fire.

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What land have you cast
from the blotted-out region

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of your face?

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What nation stung by watermarks
was filmed out of extinction

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and brought forth
resembling frost?

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What offspring must jump
through the eye of birth

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to be winked at when
covered with brick sweat?

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What ache piled its
planks on the corner pier,

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now crumbles onto
motionless water,

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sniffed at by forest smoke?

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What season cannot locate an eye
in the dark of the sun gyrating

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into red ocher after I thought
you noticed my language was

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half wren, half
pigeon and, together,

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we spoke a wing pattern on the
wall that was raised to keep

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'us' out, there where
'calling' became

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'culling,' 'distance' distanced,
in a mere scrape of enamel

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on yellow teeth?

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What father woke, turned over
his wife, she didn't want to,

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but he pushed until
the baby leapt

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through, now, now, now,
strummed into a chorus

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of burn marks on ceilings
where police sirens fruit

00:07:18.770 --> 00:07:23.670 align:middle line:84%
magpie skulls on trees
of monsoon lightning?

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What, what, what-- is how the
song chimed in the wilderness.

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And I compare my hands
to what I imagine

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thought might look like when
suspended in fossilized amber,

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release the captured
mosquito from my close hands,

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string dimming gas lamps
between rain and fall,

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and insert into the
knife's pale origin--

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a twig warming the
clutching hand.

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This windowless house marrows
my veins with thinking.

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Scraps of venison leaf
the picture frame.

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A stoplight dangles
from the sunbeam

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of a birth song billowing
from stratus to cumulus

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to nimbus to drought, as the
ache of ten trees silences

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the dull ax.

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You should have seen the
shrew torn tendon, snout, fur,

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claw by the mountain stream
under bright moonlight,

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small as a baby's fist--

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it spiraled in the
crashing waves.

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The luminous wander
cornfields without husbands;

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their wooden faces
splinter the owl's nest;

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their tongues scraped bone
smooth with cartilage,

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speak the gray language
of black stones.

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They throb in the cornfield.

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They quake out of silence
bleating across engine growl.

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They will trail us.

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They will wake with eagle
whistles in their mouths.

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And I sensed the knife in your
past, its sharp edge shanked

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by the canyon stream--

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A silver trickle
between the book jacket,

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nihízaad peeled open
inside a diabetic mouth.

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The waters of my
clans flash flooded--

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I fell from the
white of its eyes--

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our fathers had no children to
name their own no baby's cry

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to place between
argument and arguments.

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The commercial
flashed a blue path

00:10:05.120 --> 00:10:08.960 align:middle line:84%
across the lakes of our
veins the bluest glint,

00:10:08.960 --> 00:10:11.720 align:middle line:84%
a rock in the ear told
our tongues entwined,

00:10:11.720 --> 00:10:17.420 align:middle line:84%
that I was reaching for
the corn field inside you,

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that I was longing to outlive
this long, terrible whisper

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pointing toward my skull
damp in a desert canyon,

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white-washed by the ache
of fog lights reaching

00:10:32.900 --> 00:10:35.180 align:middle line:90%
to unravel my combed hair.

00:10:35.180 --> 00:10:43.010 align:middle line:90%


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And I wanted to swallow
the song's flowers,

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swim diagonally its arched back,
its shadows stinging my hands

00:10:49.730 --> 00:10:52.100 align:middle line:90%
with black pollen.

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We were on the same surgical
table waiting for the surgeons

00:10:54.950 --> 00:10:58.370 align:middle line:90%
to carve us back into shape.

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The drum pulsed
somewhere in the dark

00:10:59.930 --> 00:11:03.290 align:middle line:84%
and I heard a woman
unbraiding her hair.

00:11:03.290 --> 00:11:06.380 align:middle line:84%
I felt morning songs leave
from the hooghan's smoke-hole

00:11:06.380 --> 00:11:09.020 align:middle line:84%
and curl outward from
the roof of the sky,

00:11:09.020 --> 00:11:11.750 align:middle line:90%
gliding through us like rain.

00:11:11.750 --> 00:11:15.710 align:middle line:90%
I sang, sang until the sun rose.

00:11:15.710 --> 00:11:19.910 align:middle line:84%
The shadows of my face grew
into a swallow with folded wings

00:11:19.910 --> 00:11:23.060 align:middle line:90%
and darted into the fire.

00:11:23.060 --> 00:11:24.890 align:middle line:84%
The cloud became a
skull and crushed

00:11:24.890 --> 00:11:26.270 align:middle line:90%
to the earth above Black Mesa.

00:11:26.270 --> 00:11:29.590 align:middle line:90%


00:11:29.590 --> 00:11:32.560 align:middle line:84%
The cloud wanted to slip
through the coal mines

00:11:32.560 --> 00:11:35.440 align:middle line:90%
and unleash its horses.

00:11:35.440 --> 00:11:37.120 align:middle line:84%
It wanted to crack
open bulldozers

00:11:37.120 --> 00:11:39.040 align:middle line:84%
and spray their
yolks over the hills

00:11:39.040 --> 00:11:41.770 align:middle line:84%
so that a new birth cry
would awaken the people who

00:11:41.770 --> 00:11:44.140 align:middle line:90%
had fallen asleep.

00:11:44.140 --> 00:11:46.330 align:middle line:84%
It wanted to push their
asymmetrical ramblings

00:11:46.330 --> 00:11:49.210 align:middle line:84%
into the weft of a storm
blanket, dye it hazel

00:11:49.210 --> 00:11:53.200 align:middle line:84%
and sink it into
the rising waters.

00:11:53.200 --> 00:11:55.120 align:middle line:84%
A city dragged its
bridges behind it

00:11:55.120 --> 00:11:57.340 align:middle line:84%
and finally collapsed
in a supermarket

00:11:57.340 --> 00:12:01.720 align:middle line:84%
asking for the first apple
that was ever bitten.

00:12:01.720 --> 00:12:04.690 align:middle line:84%
And no one questioned
the sand anymore.

00:12:04.690 --> 00:12:06.940 align:middle line:84%
No one un-tucked themselves
from their bodies

00:12:06.940 --> 00:12:10.690 align:middle line:84%
and wandered the streets
without knowing their clans.

00:12:10.690 --> 00:12:12.700 align:middle line:84%
Everyone planted
corn in their bellies

00:12:12.700 --> 00:12:15.160 align:middle line:84%
and became sunlight
washing down plateaus

00:12:15.160 --> 00:12:18.940 align:middle line:90%
with deer running out of them.

00:12:18.940 --> 00:12:23.080 align:middle line:84%
The phone was ringing
through it all.

00:12:23.080 --> 00:12:28.550 align:middle line:84%
The line was busy
when I picked the axe

00:12:28.550 --> 00:12:32.075 align:middle line:84%
and chose the first
tree to chop down."

00:12:32.075 --> 00:12:37.240 align:middle line:90%


00:12:37.240 --> 00:12:40.635 align:middle line:90%
[APPLAUSE]

00:12:40.635 --> 00:12:42.090 align:middle line:90%


00:12:42.090 --> 00:12:43.850 align:middle line:90%
Thank you.

00:12:43.850 --> 00:12:52.000 align:middle line:90%