WEBVTT

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I want to skip ahead now
to some more recent poems.

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I'm reading from a book called
The Alligator Bride, which

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selected from three
earlier books which

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I've been reading from.

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But now I want to read from The
Alligator Bride section, which

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is the last part of
the book, and then

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go to "The Yellow Room"
and some new poems.

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I want to read the title poem,
"The Alligator Bride," now.

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"The clock of my
days winds down.

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The cat eats sparrows
outside my window.

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Once she brought
me a small rabbit

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which we devoured together
under the Empire Table

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while the men shrieked
repossessing the gold umbrella.

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Now the beard on my
clock turns white.

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My cat stares into dark corners
missing her gold umbrella.

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She is in love with
the Alligator Bride.

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Ah, the tiny fine white teeth.

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The Bride, propped on
her tail in white lace,

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stares from the
holes of her eyes.

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Her stuck-open mouth laughs
at minister and people.

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On bare new wood, fourteen
tomatoes, a dozen ears of corn,

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six bottles of white wine,
a melon, a cat, broccoli,

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and the Alligator Bride.

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The color of bubblegum, the
consistency of petroleum jelly,

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wickedness oozes from
the palm of my left hand.

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My cat licks it.

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I watch the Alligator Bride.

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Big houses like
shabby boulders hold

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themselves tight in gelatin.

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I am unable to daydream.

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The sky is a gun aimed at me.

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I pull the trigger.

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The skull of my promises
leans in a black closet,

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gapes with its good
mouth for a teat to suck.

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A bird flies back
and forth in my house

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that is covered by gelatin, and
the cat leaps at it, missing.

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Under the Empire Table
the Alligator Bride

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lies in her bridal shroud.

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My left hand leaks on
the Chinese carpet."

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