WEBVTT

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I'm going to start by
reading a poem from my book.

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This is called "Perspectives."

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Then I'll be reading
new work after that.

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"Perspectives."

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"One night a blunt wind
scoured my eyes for hours.

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I sell Christmas seals,
ringing doorbells,

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holding up gold stamps with
egg white angels trumpeting

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askew in the trees.

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It was heaven.

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A gaudy fishbowl were the saints
mooned forever at a clay child,

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a bird for $0.50.

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The houses have crystallized
in the snow turned blue

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with Christmas lights
strung in ersatz steeples

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over the front yard creche
where a dog moved wolf-like.

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Years later, I
found a curled seal

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in a bureau crack, the angels
still shining at resurrection.

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I burned it to delicate
ash on the sidewalk,

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watching an ant
clamber furiously

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from the smoke with a
huge breadcrumb lodged

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in his black jaw and thought,
how well I understand.

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Somehow today squinting at
a file of ants on a leaf,

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they're inscrutable
as cuneiform.

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I believed death was
simply bone against bone,

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thoughtlessness, the
way a crushed aunt dries

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and blows through the grass
without memory or direction.

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What were angels but wishes.

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Now their pellucid
wings loom in my dreams.

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I see the real
meaning of trumpets

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and that fierce gift, not death,
but the tumult of perception."

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