Thank you for that amazing introduction.
Very humbled and honored to be reading with Mary Jo Bang
tonight.
You guys are really in for a treat.
When I put these poems together, I heard them
as in four movements.
Not metrically, but tonally, I was thinking
of symphonic movements.
So there's an allegro, an andante, a dance,
and a second allegro.
And so I'm going to read a few from each of those movements,
as I see them, and they all start with an epigraph.
One.
You are here, map says, big toy world.
Now that I said that, I'm going to start right in the middle.
With that, I'm going to start with this one instead.
"Valentine Behind Door Number Two."
"Here lies the starlet heart, housed in scarlet shingles.
Blood bright, the socket, white piano of ribs.
For you, a light box to hold them.
Pry it open, and the panorama leaks out--
twinkles, too."