[APPLAUSE]
Thank you so much for that lovely introduction.
I just want to say I'm so happy to be here tonight.
It's such an honor to read.
And I am so grateful that you guys are here.
So thank you for coming.
And I really can't say enough good things
about the Poetry Center, who is such a vibrant and valuable
part of this community.
So thank you all for the work that you do.
I also want to dedicate this book.
This book is dedicated to my parents who, in many ways,
made it possible.
I'm actually going to be reading from pages because I still
am not used to the book itself.
I've spent so many years with the poems
on paper that that's how I'm going to read.
And I'm going to kind of skip around in here,
too, so that I don't overwhelm you
with my love of cephalopods.
Only one dose.
So, weekends.
"Crypsis and Mimicry."
"Crypsis for the way that things are hidden,
how certain small truths disappear against a larger
truth, the way my Cajun friend explains
bouillabaisse as the synthesis of red snapper and crab,
oysters, mussels, and crayfish, garlic and orange peel,
dry white wine, a fusion of the senses.
So autumn slips into the swamp lands with glossy alligator
eyes.
We talk of love potions while drinking cafe noir, powdered
lizards and tender missives scrawled with blood,
how her grandmother crushed peach seeds with stones
to draw dirt to the bottom of a pail of Bayou water.
A speckled fish could flatten itself against those sediments
and simply fade away.
She used to dream there was a hole in the bucket,
and so the task was never ending.
That's crypsis.
Everything against intrinsic terrain dissolves in it.
Mimicry is different.
It's you stroking my throat as if I'm a bird.
It's me pretending in your arms to be a bird.
I am not a bird.
I remember reading how the Curies' laboratory would
glow at night.
Marie wrote of the enchantment of those luminous silhouettes.
I used to believe that science was only
concerned with certainty.
Later, I recognized its mystery.
There isn't language for it, the way
I can see you when you were shining,
our roots crypsis, our wings mimicry."