I'm going to read the poem that was
printed on the little brochure.
Actually, this poem and the next poem I'm going to read
are companion poems.
They were written a couple of years apart.
But I think they're basically dealing with drowned things,
drowned children.
The way you discover something after a book is published,
I've noticed that a lot of the poems I wrote
were about children that were in some way underwater.
And that as I passed through a series of years
of learning about myself, the child
was slowly coming up for air and being saved.
So this one is called The Lifeguard.
It's a persona poem.
And the speaker is a male.
"The children vault the giant carpet roll of waves,
with sharp cries swing legs wide over water.
A garden of umbrellas blooms down the stretch of beach.
Far offshore always I can spot that same pale thumbprint
of a face going under, grown bigger as I approach,
the one arm circling, locking rigid around my neck.
The other as its fist hooks and jabs my head away.
Ear to the conch, ear to the pillow,
beneath a canopy of bathers each night I hear the voice
and pry the jaws apart, choke on the tangle of sable hair
that blurs the dead girl's mouth.
That anarchy of breath, dog soft and still at my neck.
She calls from the water glass I drink from.
From my own throat when I swallow."