WEBVTT

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This poem I'm not going to
tell you anything about--

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this is one of the few
poems that some of us

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write sometimes or maybe
all of us write sometimes.

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In which, you know
exactly what you think--

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what you're writing about.

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And you write the poem
and you publish it

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and it is interpreted in
a lot of different ways.

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And you realize, although
classroom teachers

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don't like to hear this and
I've been one so I know,

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you're supposed to find out what
the poet was thinking about.

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But it's interpreted in a
number of ways that, I realized,

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could be perfectly valid.

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That those things are there that
I didn't realize I was doing.

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So I don't want
to shut off any--

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I want to shut off almost none
of your ways of interpreting

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this poem.

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The only one that I
can shut off, for you,

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is the autobiographical
interpretation.

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The poem is called, "The Twins"
and I am not only not a twin,

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I didn't even have a sibling.

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So in that sense,
that interpretation

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is probably not valid.

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Anyway, here is "The
Twins", take it as you wish.

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My sweet-faced, tattle-tale
brother was born blind,

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but the colors drip in his head.

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He paints with his fingers.

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All day with his pots and
paper he follows me around

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wherever I set up my easel,
till I pinch his bat ears,

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then before he goes he swears
he didn't feel anything.

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But he knows my feelings,
sneaks them out of my skin.

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The things he knows!

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Leaving me squeezed
and sulking, he

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pretends he felt them
himself and tells everyone.

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Nobody ever blames him.

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He's terribly talented.

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The world, glimpsing
itself through him,

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will grow sick with
self-love it seems.

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And under his eyelid lie
down, in burning shame,

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with its own shadow.

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Whereas, on my canvas, it
wears its gray and brown

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like a fat beaver.

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And even as I sweat on
my brush, all forms,

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at its simple-minded toothy
grin, branches, limbs, trunks,

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topple in a watery backwash.

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When he goes to sleep, he says,
the world stays in his head,

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like a big spiderweb
strung between ear and ear,

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buzzing like telephone wires.

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And what he has heard
all night, next morning

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has happened, is true, is there.

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Though it always comes back for
me, thick, bathed, grateful.

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Everything has to be
re-imagined, each sunrise, when

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I crawl from my black comfort.

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But can't make a phone call.

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I have to talk to something
in front of my eyes.

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You'd never know we were close.

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When we meet strangers,
they poke my round stomach

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and pat his long bare legs.

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I gush, and he, or that's
what it looks like, glares.

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Then he stomps on my oils, and
we fight like cats and dogs.

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But when it rains sometimes,
and he feels it, and I hear it,

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and he closes my eyes with his
fingers to stop my raining.

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And one tear falls before
everything is quiet,

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and his tear is the color
of cinnamon on my tongue.

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Oh then, we leave together
and nobody can find us.

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Not even our mother, if she
came, could tell us apart.

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Only the stars can see,
who cluster around us,

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my painted person crouched
in his painted heart.

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See me afterward for the
footnote in my interpretation.

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[LAUGHTER]

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If you want to compare notes.

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