WEBVTT

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With this next poem,
I took the idea

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from the visual artist
of creating a study,

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a collection of sketches.

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And I was interested
in the idea of going

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from something very large
to something smaller

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in the course of it.

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I also reference
symmetry in this poem.

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But it's actually
not the symmetry

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of the title of the collection,
which is radial symmetry.

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This is symmetry of octopuses,
which actually are bilateral,

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just in case you were wondering

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[LAUGHTER]

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"Study for Love's Body, One--

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Landscape with Yellow Birds."

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"The theories of
love have become

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tremulous and complicated,
the way snow falls

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or Saturn revolves repeatedly
around some distance

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where space is nothing yet
still something that separates.

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Never mind time.

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Caterpillars have turned the
fruit trees into body bags.

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The children paint the
mandibles of fallen ones

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with silver meant
for nursery stars.

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Without the immense
responsibility of sympathy,

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these small deaths are
nothing more than artifice.

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Like a single magnolia
in a cut glass bowl,

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we have no idea where our
roots went so suddenly."

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"Two-- Architecture in Ruins."

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"Third floor of
the doll factory,

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ferns suck carbon
and sharper chemicals

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from air near the women working.

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They're hunched over
tables of worked wood.

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Half of everyone is
painting eyes and lashes

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on porcelain heads.

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The rest are threading
hands to sleeves.

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Outside in the courtyard,
a smattering of doves rise.

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Have you ever wanted to
kiss a stranger's hands?"

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"Three-- Gardens
Without Bats or Moss."

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"Gauguin writes to Theo van
Gogh that in his painting

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he wants to suggest the idea
of suffering without ever

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explaining what kind."

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"Four-- In Stone Archways."

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"The light is spilt
green milk, which

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is languorous as the red
monkey Gauguin painted

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by the brown body of
Anna, the Javanese.

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At the Chinese market,
I buy two red teacups

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and a can of coconut milk.

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I think Gauguin wouldn't know
how Anna loved that monkey

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and saying to him late at night.

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Everywhere the sea screams
at me, a great pink slab

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of octopus arm, beside it baby
seasoned in orange spices.

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Such symmetry.

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Surely they swam through the
night like thirsty flowers.

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I think you had it
right when you said love

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is the mathematics of distance.

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Split like a clam on ice,
I feel raw, half eaten.

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I rot in the cold blue of
the ego, the crushed velvet

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of Anna's chair."

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