I feel like I'd like to read something funny.
My friends told me that I used to be very funny.
I guess I'm turning into a tragic poet.
I know.
My life is pretty fun.
It's this poem.
These poems are morose.
And here's the other one.
This is another male persona voice.
I read an article in "The Times" about 10 years ago
about a child who had fallen into a well
and was pulled out feet first.
And I read that, and I said, oh, birth--
right away, birth.
But I thought I was being really clever in this poem,
and so I tried to hide it and change it and turn it around.
And I gave it to my little sister a few years ago,
who's about eight years younger than I am
and who doesn't read poetry too often.
And she looked it, and she said, oh, Jane, another birth poem.
[LAUGHTER]
But this is a true story.
Didn't happen to me.
That strangeness that happens when there's
some kind of accident or catastrophe,
and you're drawn into it, it's very unreal.
And that's the feeling that I wanted to get in this.
"Witness."
"Chilled moonrise, his mother now in bed,
her terror tranquilizing with a cold idea.
We scoured the neighborhood with search lights, the woods
behind his school, the lumberyard cesspool,
a black moon in the grass, called everyone,
and no one called to me.
Jack-knifed in the pipe, he could not
shimmy up the mud and ooze, the narrow walls collapsing,
dark water notching up his spine.
Did he see me swimming in the glazed eye of light he woke to?
Did he wake at all, as the icy noose of water
tightened around his chin, the North star of the squad car
flashing?
Navigating by touch and shadow, our lasso caught his feet.
We tugged.
His head slipped deeper in the cavity.
Helpless, I held my breath.
Hand over hand, we hauled him up and out into the humming air,
limp and shivering, feet first.
He swung a long moment over us, shiny, bigger than we thought,
his face bruised blue with that metallic light.
Cold gravity, release.
He whined like nothing human in my arms."