WEBVTT

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I'm just going to
read, probably,

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a couple more from here.

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The boarding school was in
a place where most of us

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were separated from our
families for months at a time,

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and if your parents had a car,
they could get in to see you,

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and they would come and
visit you on the weekend.

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Or you could go home for
the regular school breaks.

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Fortunately, my parents would
come and visit me once a month,

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driving from the reservation,
check us out, as we called it.

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And we'd spend the
weekend with them.

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Then suddenly we had to go
back to the boarding school.

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The first poem that I wrote
about the boarding school

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was this poem called
"No Parole Today."

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At the time, I was a
student at the University

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of New Mexico in Albuquerque,
and the assignment

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was to read, to write
a poem about prison.

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And I connected that to living
alone, living in the boarding

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school for a number of years,
because our lives, really, were

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very regulated and regimented.

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We couldn't come
and go as we pleased

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because it was a large campus.

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And so we had to be kept
track of all the time.

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So this poem was actually--

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This first poem,
"No Parole Today,"

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started all of this
about boarding schools.

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"No Parole Today."

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In 1980, prisoners rioted in
the Santa Fe State Prison.

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After several days of
violence and bloodshed,

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the prison was retaken
by the authorities.

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A shadow of smoke
passed over my dreams.

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I awoke, tried to
remember what was

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said about Santa Fe and
prison, the blood and emotions

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spilling over.

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I dressed and poured
a cup of coffee.

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Then I remembered my own
scars, lying on bunk beds

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and listening to floor polishers
swirling, and the bell that

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drove me to sneaking
behind cars and freeways.

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I swore, then, I would never
scrub no more walls and porches

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at midnight, not for the woman
who sits sideways in auditorium

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chairs and steals
bacon from the back

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door as easily as she could
steal your confidence.

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I'm not from here.

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No more rubber meat and
showering on cement floors.

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I learned early that my life
was separated by walls and roll

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calls.

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Last night, they said, 1,000
men uncapped themselves

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behind barbed wire and smoke.

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