WEBVTT

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I warned you it was bleak.

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Moving along now, going
back to this first poem,

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"Emplumada," It moves through
poems about, for example,

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domestic violence, like
I've been talking about,

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and the random
violence that happens.

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It moves through that
and into something else.

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The book begins
with a quote called,

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"Consider the power of
wrestling your ally.

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His will is to kill you.

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He has nothing against you."

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The sense of
anonymous violence is

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what Chicanos and people in the
Barrio have to face every day.

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But there is
something to be taken

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from that, not that
suffering makes

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you any better or anything.

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I always like Ricky Lee Jones.

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She said, you don't have
to suffer to create art.

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You will suffer, period.

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So the poems move out of that.

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Anyway, this is a poem
about running away.

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I read this earlier
at the high school.

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This is a poem about
running away called "Crow."

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Excuse me.

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"She started and
shot from the pine,

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and then brilliantly
settled in the west field

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and sunned herself purple.

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I saw myself twig and
rasp, dry in breath,

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and ammonia-smelling.

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Women taught me to clean
and then build my own house.

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Before men came, they
whispered, no good polished oak,

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learned hammer and Phillips,
learned socket and rivet.

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I ran over rocks and
gravel they placed

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by hand, leaving burly arguments
to fester the bedrooms.

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With my best jeans, a 20,
and a Shepherd pup, I ran.

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Flushed and shadowed
by no one, alone, I

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settled, stiff in my mouth
with the words women gave me."

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