As I meant-- as I said earlier, for a number of years,
I could not write poems about myself
for one reason or another.
But for the last two or three years,
I've had kind of a seizure of writing
nothing else but autobiographical poems,
and I'd like to read some of them to you now.
I'd like to begin by reading a poem about puberty,
which is a terrible time in any young person's life.
It's a very short poem.
When I was a young-- a little boy,
I used to walk home from school past this dry cleaning factory,
and the ladies generally in the spring would--
working in the place would entertain me.
And this is a poem about that business.
It's called "One for the Ladies at the Troy Laundry Who
Cooled Themselves for Zimmer."
"The ladies at the Troy Laundry pressed and pressed
in the warm fog of their labor.
They cooled themselves at the windows,
the steam rising from their gibbous skins
as I dawdled home from school.
In warmer weather, they wore no blouses,
and if I fought the crumbling coke pile to the top,
they laughed and waved at me, billowy from their irons.
Oh man, the ladies at the Troy Laundry
smelled like cod fish out of water,
and yet the very fur within their armpits
made me rise wondering and small."
[LAUGHTER]
That is an awful time for a person.
It really is.
[LAUGHTER]