WEBVTT NOTE Created by CaptionSync from Automatic Sync Technologies www.automaticsync.com 00:00:03.196 --> 00:00:10.356 align:middle >> If you happen to be Chicana, oftentimes, editors ask you to send different poems. 00:00:11.096 --> 00:00:14.856 align:middle They want poems that are more representative of the Chicano group. 00:00:15.476 --> 00:00:21.816 align:middle They want poems with one more serape, with one more frijole, you know, whatever. 00:00:22.306 --> 00:00:30.746 align:middle And you sit down and you tear your hair and you wonder, well, gee, who am I trying to represent? 00:00:30.746 --> 00:00:36.436 align:middle And you begin to realize, like so many people writing, that you really are a kind of hybrid. 00:00:37.356 --> 00:00:41.086 align:middle And you really are kind of person in the middle and the only kind of poem 00:00:41.086 --> 00:00:45.986 align:middle that you can write is really a poem that represents just yourself 00:00:46.606 --> 00:00:49.416 align:middle and maybe a few other people quite a bit like you. 00:00:50.456 --> 00:00:53.346 align:middle And this was a poem that I wrote for that kind of editor. 00:00:53.936 --> 00:00:55.906 align:middle It's called Even. 00:00:58.496 --> 00:00:59.706 align:middle You look for her. 00:01:00.366 --> 00:01:06.996 align:middle Someone you could crack down the nose line, between the breath and lower sea, 00:01:07.366 --> 00:01:12.666 align:middle brown Oregon's, brown blood, brown bone even. 00:01:13.486 --> 00:01:17.126 align:middle These words you want are a game and those of us 00:01:17.126 --> 00:01:24.796 align:middle who have learned the game have triangular hearts, which spin gyrate toward white, 00:01:25.646 --> 00:01:32.846 align:middle toward brown, toward ourselves most often, our way to gather edges 00:01:32.846 --> 00:01:36.196 align:middle like dry wood, make a bed, a bridge. 00:01:36.786 --> 00:01:39.436 align:middle Lie on it. 00:01:39.436 --> 00:01:47.096 align:middle Our lives, our mouth, no matter how the jaw placed, the teeth don't see you. 00:01:47.766 --> 00:01:49.006 align:middle They buckle here. 00:01:49.386 --> 00:01:54.976 align:middle We point them out so when you point at our lives, you get it straight.