WEBVTT

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This is a poem
about myself also,

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but not the same kind of poem.

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I was listening to
television one morning

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and someone was talking and
they were talking about witches,

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and they said something about
being born with 12 fingers.

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Well, I was born with 12
fingers and I've always

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regretted very much
that they were cut off.

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I think it would be really
great to have 12 fingers when

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everybody else just has 10.

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My mother was born
with 12 fingers

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and so was my daughter,
my oldest daughter.

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Well, I promised myself that
she would have her fingers,

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but you know when you--
at that time anyway

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when you had a child
they drug you, right?

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Yeah.

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They put you under.

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And when I woke up they had
taken my daughter's fingers,

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but they didn't really,
this poem is about that.

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I was born with 12 fingers
like my mother and my daughter

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All of us born wearing strange
black gloves extra baby

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fingers hanging over the
sides of our cribs and dipping

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into the milk

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Somebody was afraid we
would learn to cast spells

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and our wonders were cut off

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But they didn't understand
the powerful memory of ghosts

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Now, we take what we want
but with invisible fingers

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And we connect my dead mother,
my live daughter, and me

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through our terrible
shadowy hands

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[APPLAUSE]

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