WEBVTT

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I feel like I'd like to
read something funny.

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My friends told me that
I used to be very funny.

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I guess I'm turning
into a tragic poet.

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I know.

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My life is pretty fun.

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It's this poem.

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These poems are morose.

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And here's the other one.

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This is another
male persona voice.

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I read an article in "The
Times" about 10 years ago

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about a child who had
fallen into a well

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and was pulled out feet first.

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And I read that, and
I said, oh, birth--

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right away, birth.

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But I thought I was being
really clever in this poem,

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and so I tried to hide it and
change it and turn it around.

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And I gave it to my little
sister a few years ago,

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who's about eight
years younger than I am

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and who doesn't read
poetry too often.

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And she looked it, and she said,
oh, Jane, another birth poem.

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[LAUGHTER]

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But this is a true story.

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Didn't happen to me.

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That strangeness that
happens when there's

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some kind of accident
or catastrophe,

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and you're drawn into
it, it's very unreal.

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And that's the feeling that
I wanted to get in this.

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"Witness."

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"Chilled moonrise,
his mother now in bed,

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her terror tranquilizing
with a cold idea.

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We scoured the neighborhood
with search lights, the woods

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behind his school, the
lumberyard cesspool,

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a black moon in the
grass, called everyone,

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and no one called to me.

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Jack-knifed in the
pipe, he could not

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shimmy up the mud and ooze,
the narrow walls collapsing,

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dark water notching
up his spine.

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Did he see me swimming in the
glazed eye of light he woke to?

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Did he wake at all, as
the icy noose of water

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tightened around his chin, the
North star of the squad car

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flashing?

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Navigating by touch and shadow,
our lasso caught his feet.

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We tugged.

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His head slipped
deeper in the cavity.

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Helpless, I held my breath.

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Hand over hand, we hauled him
up and out into the humming air,

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limp and shivering, feet first.

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He swung a long moment over us,
shiny, bigger than we thought,

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his face bruised blue
with that metallic light.

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Cold gravity, release.

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He whined like nothing
human in my arms."

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