WEBVTT

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We will now turn to the magazine
Peaches and Bats, issue 5.

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And we'll read some
of those pieces.

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And we'll find here
that some of these

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are haibun the famed
prose cousin of haiku

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with a little tail at the
end that little coda--

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that haiku of unrestricted
syllable length that's so

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pleases us all.

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I got going on these
little numbers in 1984

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when I saw that April issue
of Clayton Eshleman's magazine

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Sulfur, and Ashbury had
done I think six of them.

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So I thought, hey, maybe
I will try one of those.

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Well, I've been
doing it ever since.

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It's like a contagious disease.

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So stand back, OK?

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This is called "Impact" "I
haven't loved you in a decade.

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And some days I don't
recall your name.

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I do remember that you wear
your hair as though it is

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an inconvenience that cannot
be tamed without calling out

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a posse and embarrassing
whoever neighbors are.

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It is well within
my psyche to confer

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with people who claim expertise
about my out-of-bounds response

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to you.

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I am habituated to
deciding the less said

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about either one
of us, the better

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for distinguishing old wealth
from dust mites on holiday.

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A fortnight slides
past before I have

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to think about the smell
of single cigarettes smoked

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in the movies of the '40s.

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Once a man wearing
a distinguished hat

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attempted to hire me as
his immediate superior.

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I wore a blank look in hopes
of being let go like an adverb.

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He merely caught me
between meetings,

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proving once again that I exist
until I don't, at which point

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you can reminisce being
positioned out back

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where the staff retrieved
scraps of material that

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did not make it into art--

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saffron rice, elliptical
machines, and roommates

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voted off the island."

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