I warned you it was bleak.
Moving along now, going back to this first poem,
"Emplumada," It moves through poems about, for example,
domestic violence, like I've been talking about,
and the random violence that happens.
It moves through that and into something else.
The book begins with a quote called,
"Consider the power of wrestling your ally.
His will is to kill you.
He has nothing against you."
The sense of anonymous violence is
what Chicanos and people in the Barrio have to face every day.
But there is something to be taken
from that, not that suffering makes
you any better or anything.
I always like Ricky Lee Jones.
She said, you don't have to suffer to create art.
You will suffer, period.
So the poems move out of that.
Anyway, this is a poem about running away.
I read this earlier at the high school.
This is a poem about running away called "Crow."
Excuse me.
"She started and shot from the pine,
and then brilliantly settled in the west field
and sunned herself purple.
I saw myself twig and rasp, dry in breath,
and ammonia-smelling.
Women taught me to clean and then build my own house.
Before men came, they whispered, no good polished oak,
learned hammer and Phillips, learned socket and rivet.
I ran over rocks and gravel they placed
by hand, leaving burly arguments to fester the bedrooms.
With my best jeans, a 20, and a Shepherd pup, I ran.
Flushed and shadowed by no one, alone, I
settled, stiff in my mouth with the words women gave me."