WEBVTT

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I find that as I was
growing up my grandfather

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was used to singing--

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my grandfather on my
father's side and that's

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why I'm Skidi, a
band of the Pawnee.

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And he always used to sing
what we call dashboard songs.

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And so they were war dance
songs and he would always

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beat on the dashboard.

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[RHYTHMICALLY BEATING PODIUM]

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And so music it's something
that I've found always

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permeates everything
I write about.

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So this next piece shouldn't
be of any surprise.

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"Hello.

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How are you?

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Have you been all
right through all

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those lonely, lonely,
lonely, lonely nights?

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Telephone line.

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Electric Light Orchestra.

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Another telephone line.

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Spot of energy
and emergence knit

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together neon pulse a bright,
new enterprise in a galaxy far,

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far away.

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I cried away a familiar set
of blue-gray eyes today,

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place marked in a river
of written telepathy.

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[? Romulan ?] [? nun ?] time
notwithstanding the tears.

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A distance measured
in time, even

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if I was unaware of my
body watershed such heat.

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Maybe because I hadn't
bothered to remember the spaces

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between each careful breath.

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A love bite I
tried, cried, lied,

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to convince my heart with
ebb and flow trickery.

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Our watercolor words
kept my house together

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come feast or greasy famine.

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The paint may have yellowed,
the fine screen door mesh torn.

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I told myself to
reimagine, edit,

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touch-up the picture of us.

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Forgetting there
was no such image.

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That girl, me, survived for 20
years and more on such a diet.

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Self-inflicted
shards of the truth

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found refuge in somebody else's
blue-gray eyes, broad forehead,

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thick brown hair combed back.

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I must believe it myself.

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He versus you.

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And acknowledge my dream
of you was best unrealized.

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Regret no longer manifest in
what I, we, didn't dare to do.

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Regret or something
similar borders

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the path I stumbled over
following your shadow.

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I'm not blaming you
for lacking the courage

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to love me any more than I
blame Osito for not loving me

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when he didn't want to.

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I am guilty of both
for him and you.

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It doesn't matter
which, or why, or even

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if my sentiments
have changed time.

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Maybe distance, maybe.

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Just what it takes for
me to travel there."

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It's always amazing when
you're reading your stuff

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that you think, wow, that's
going to go way faster.

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And then you read it
and you're like, wow,

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that was longer than I thought.

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I'm going to read one last
piece if you'll indulge me.

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This one is written
for my grandmother

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on my mother's side.

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And it's called "John
Spoon's Granddaughter."

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John Spoon was a trader.

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Probably from the turn of the
century until about the 1950s.

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And he would go
down into Mexico.

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And he was a wealthy man
by O'odham standards.

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And there was no banks.

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There was just horses
and wagons and my grandma

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had a really cool car.

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One of the first on the
reservation at the time.

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And heard stories
about her blue dress

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and her blue bonnet
and her white gloves.

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So "John Spoon's Granddaughter."

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"What can you say about
a woman born of ocean

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clouds and soral fruit?

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I don't mean to brag when I
tell you she is beautiful.

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I like to think she is
a high cactus bloom.

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Swirls, bright yellow center,
white petals, wide and fragrant

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welcoming cobalt dawn.

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Fire baptized fingertips.

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Pinch virgin dough.

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Sure hands and easy
movements turn [O'ODHAM]..

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Her tortillas flipped
upright ensure

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the balance of the world.

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She can place egg-soaked bread
and golden yolk in her mouth

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with a grace that
makes me hungry.

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Each texture encoded
in the tiny lines

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around her eyes and mouth.

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She scratches gardens out
of stingy Sonora sand.

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She's as sweet indigo
blossoms to fruit.

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They bow their heavy faces
with cool monsoon juices.

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[INAUDIBLE], mountain sunsets.

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She wants his
tea-brewed fingertips

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and gilded strands of thread.

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Knit scraps of
summer and rainbow

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quilts to wrap tender brown
palms and milk-sweet bellies.

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I like to think she
is of thunderstorms.

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Maybe luscious ocean nectar
fills her belly tight

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and round to taunt small
brown birds into song.

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Silver hair and freckles.

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She has a mother's body, hips
wide, the passage of children,

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of her children's children,
shared and passed.

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Smooth skin and
folds, elegant bones.

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The crescent moon of their nails
possess dark rock luminance.

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See these marks on my face?

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These flecks of brown and black?

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Can you hear the straightness
of her back in my speech?

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The rise and fall of my voice?

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Look here.

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Now see his jaw, his shoulder,
the curve of his sturdy leg,

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the timber and certainty
of his boy-child voice.

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The dirt he ate as child.

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And I as mother were like
bones ground fine and red.

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Hers and John Spoon's.

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Supple fingers trace
patterns in sand,

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in the throaty desert
laugh of a woman.

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The gourd song of rain.

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Round, shake round,
like thunder.

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Thunder.

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Rainbows.

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And indigo fruit."

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Thank you.

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[APPLAUSE]

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