[APPLAUSE]
I'm going to take a picture of you guys.
[LAUGHTER]
I shouldn't be the only one in this platform.
Say Camembert.
Just going to lift this up for you so you don't have to--
My brother's in the audience, and he's laughing at me.
He's never been to any of my readings.
So, [INAUDIBLE],, hold on to your seat, my brother.
Thank you so much for being here and thank you, everyone, here
at the Poetry Center for having me.
I truly am happy to be with you.
Amy, my partner, and I want to go to Paris,
but we're too broke.
So I wrote this poem instead.
[LAUGHTER]
"Paris Pride Parade."
I don't know what else to say.
Really it's the middle of the night,
and I'm sobering up from too much almond liquor,
trying to persuade my body it's not dying.
But it is at planet velocity, velocity of falling in love.
She's right next to me, and I have landscapes inside me.
Did you leave these landscapes in here?
Do you know that I can change the size of all those memories
just by the power of thinking?
And if tomorrow I jump off and at the same time
think to jump back, would I not just
hang flying above the bridge water?
Well, the inside of a rainbow is brittle,
a kind of waiting room made out of marzipan
and an air of exclusivity like watching a marionette theater
do a Holocaust play inside the top of the Arc de Triomphe.
The inside of a rainbow is peeling from too much pressure
of how I love death now the way I
used to love roller coasters that she and I are hurtling
towards it and breaking age blooming
outward from the imperceptible speed.
Of all the things that make me happy, this one is strangest.
Oh, city of Paris, body of spring.
There's also this waiting room like I imagined like when
you're-- while you're waiting to figure out that you're queer,
there's like a waiting room inside the rainbow.
It's a re-imagining this kind of doctor's
office waiting room where Reader's Digest and you're just
sitting there waiting to figure yourself out.
[LAUGHTER]
Finally you do.
Hopefully.