WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.740 align:middle line:90% 00:00:01.740 --> 00:00:05.910 align:middle line:84% These get progressively weirder as I write these prose poems. 00:00:05.910 --> 00:00:12.410 align:middle line:84% This last one-- the last of the prose points I want to read is 00:00:12.410 --> 00:00:13.790 align:middle line:90% a poem called-- 00:00:13.790 --> 00:00:15.470 align:middle line:90% it's called "Sisters." 00:00:15.470 --> 00:00:17.840 align:middle line:84% And the title is dedicated to my own sister. 00:00:17.840 --> 00:00:26.600 align:middle line:84% And the title is a half serious but-- 00:00:26.600 --> 00:00:28.910 align:middle line:84% no, is a serious half-invitation-- 00:00:28.910 --> 00:00:30.980 align:middle line:84% that's the way to put it-- to take 00:00:30.980 --> 00:00:33.770 align:middle line:84% the poem as having certain kinds of political content. 00:00:33.770 --> 00:00:35.210 align:middle line:84% Anybody who calls a poem "Sisters" 00:00:35.210 --> 00:00:39.050 align:middle line:84% is going to raise certain obvious associations 00:00:39.050 --> 00:00:40.730 align:middle line:90% in the mind of an audience. 00:00:40.730 --> 00:00:44.270 align:middle line:84% The idea behind the poem-- and I think it's related 00:00:44.270 --> 00:00:47.810 align:middle line:84% to the political, to the possibility of thinking about 00:00:47.810 --> 00:00:49.610 align:middle line:90% such political issues-- 00:00:49.610 --> 00:00:50.990 align:middle line:84% and beginning thinking about them 00:00:50.990 --> 00:00:53.240 align:middle line:84% by going back to your own life and thinking about them 00:00:53.240 --> 00:00:54.680 align:middle line:84% in completely on ideological terms 00:00:54.680 --> 00:00:57.470 align:middle line:84% and starting back from there to see what it feels like-- 00:00:57.470 --> 00:01:00.800 align:middle line:84% is the idea that when you have siblings, 00:01:00.800 --> 00:01:04.459 align:middle line:84% what you remember of them is not some kind of unified being, 00:01:04.459 --> 00:01:06.080 align:middle line:84% but you remember a series of sisters. 00:01:06.080 --> 00:01:08.210 align:middle line:84% There was a cute two-year-old sister, the 2 and 1/2 and so 00:01:08.210 --> 00:01:08.720 align:middle line:90% on. 00:01:08.720 --> 00:01:11.000 align:middle line:84% It's like a movie and you watch them frame by frame. 00:01:11.000 --> 00:01:14.690 align:middle line:84% That's one of the ideas behind the poem. 00:01:14.690 --> 00:01:18.540 align:middle line:90% Anyway this is called "Sisters." 00:01:18.540 --> 00:01:21.840 align:middle line:84% "When the coach told us a tie was like kissing your sister, 00:01:21.840 --> 00:01:25.200 align:middle line:84% I couldn't believe he was that corny. 00:01:25.200 --> 00:01:28.320 align:middle line:84% I opened the gray metal door with louvers 00:01:28.320 --> 00:01:31.980 align:middle line:84% and took off my basketball shoes, my prowess, 00:01:31.980 --> 00:01:34.920 align:middle line:84% my two pairs of sweat socks, the green practice 00:01:34.920 --> 00:01:39.780 align:middle line:84% jersey with my number in gray, my shorts, my jock. 00:01:39.780 --> 00:01:45.600 align:middle line:84% I put on my street clothes, my family, my dog and walked home. 00:01:45.600 --> 00:01:48.420 align:middle line:84% The coach was an idiot but I too believed 00:01:48.420 --> 00:01:51.690 align:middle line:84% a sister was a girl you couldn't sleep with. 00:01:51.690 --> 00:01:54.270 align:middle line:84% I don't know what my sister did after school. 00:01:54.270 --> 00:01:56.460 align:middle line:84% When I got home, she was always in her room. 00:01:56.460 --> 00:01:59.550 align:middle line:84% An incubator, an electrical dictatorship. 00:01:59.550 --> 00:02:02.640 align:middle line:84% There was a record player, a hairdryer that puffed around 00:02:02.640 --> 00:02:05.730 align:middle line:84% her head like the top of a souffle, a dressing table 00:02:05.730 --> 00:02:07.320 align:middle line:90% with lights around the mirror. 00:02:07.320 --> 00:02:09.600 align:middle line:84% She pulsed in her room like an electric larva. 00:02:09.600 --> 00:02:13.020 align:middle line:90% 00:02:13.020 --> 00:02:15.750 align:middle line:84% We'd always had rooms of our own. 00:02:15.750 --> 00:02:18.480 align:middle line:90% We envied each other bitterly. 00:02:18.480 --> 00:02:22.020 align:middle line:84% Have you ever noticed how you keep reimagining the past, 00:02:22.020 --> 00:02:23.820 align:middle line:90% making it mean more? 00:02:23.820 --> 00:02:27.090 align:middle line:84% Well, my sister did have a lot of appliances 00:02:27.090 --> 00:02:29.280 align:middle line:84% but that's only one picture of her. 00:02:29.280 --> 00:02:31.020 align:middle line:84% I'd like to call her up right now, 00:02:31.020 --> 00:02:33.000 align:middle line:84% to hell with the phone bill, and find out 00:02:33.000 --> 00:02:35.070 align:middle line:90% what she was really like. 00:02:35.070 --> 00:02:38.070 align:middle line:84% But she can't remember a large parts of it either. 00:02:38.070 --> 00:02:40.290 align:middle line:84% We talked about it once and discovered 00:02:40.290 --> 00:02:42.480 align:middle line:90% we had different parents. 00:02:42.480 --> 00:02:45.660 align:middle line:84% Oh, the same couple conceived us and lived with us, 00:02:45.660 --> 00:02:49.140 align:middle line:84% but our memories of them overlapped a few times only, 00:02:49.140 --> 00:02:51.690 align:middle line:90% like eclipses. 00:02:51.690 --> 00:02:53.940 align:middle line:84% Have you ever noticed how the more usefully 00:02:53.940 --> 00:02:58.170 align:middle line:84% you make the past explain your life, the more unreal it is? 00:02:58.170 --> 00:03:02.250 align:middle line:84% I've had so many sisters and all of them gone. 00:03:02.250 --> 00:03:05.910 align:middle line:84% In that way, we are all movies of each other. 00:03:05.910 --> 00:03:10.290 align:middle line:84% The lights are lowered, there is a white box on the screen. 00:03:10.290 --> 00:03:12.960 align:middle line:84% It is like an abandoned refrigerator and my sister 00:03:12.960 --> 00:03:14.460 align:middle line:90% and I go in. 00:03:14.460 --> 00:03:18.000 align:middle line:84% It is like a phone booth for calls to the dead and my sister 00:03:18.000 --> 00:03:19.920 align:middle line:90% and I go in. 00:03:19.920 --> 00:03:21.330 align:middle line:90% The film begins. 00:03:21.330 --> 00:03:24.930 align:middle line:84% It stars my dead sisters and my dead selves. 00:03:24.930 --> 00:03:27.330 align:middle line:84% The Earth is being invaded by the future, 00:03:27.330 --> 00:03:29.700 align:middle line:90% only the dead can save it. 00:03:29.700 --> 00:03:33.150 align:middle line:84% We decide to take over the bodies of the living. 00:03:33.150 --> 00:03:36.660 align:middle line:84% The acting is awful, the plot is melodramatic, 00:03:36.660 --> 00:03:39.150 align:middle line:90% the end is ambiguous. 00:03:39.150 --> 00:03:42.207 align:middle line:84% But we like the film because we like watching each other. 00:03:42.207 --> 00:03:44.040 align:middle line:84% And we can imagine how much fun we must have 00:03:44.040 --> 00:03:47.040 align:middle line:90% had playing those silly roles. 00:03:47.040 --> 00:03:48.930 align:middle line:90% The lights come on. 00:03:48.930 --> 00:03:50.190 align:middle line:90% It's late. 00:03:50.190 --> 00:03:52.320 align:middle line:90% I huddled into my coat. 00:03:52.320 --> 00:03:55.050 align:middle line:84% It will be dark and cold outside. 00:03:55.050 --> 00:03:57.660 align:middle line:84% I think of my sisters frame by frame, 00:03:57.660 --> 00:04:00.480 align:middle line:90% like apostolic succession. 00:04:00.480 --> 00:04:02.220 align:middle line:84% I remember slouching out into the winter 00:04:02.220 --> 00:04:05.940 align:middle line:84% night after basketball practice between lives. 00:04:05.940 --> 00:04:09.030 align:middle line:84% I go towards the future, strung by sisters. 00:04:09.030 --> 00:04:11.760 align:middle line:84% I push ahead of me a cloud of cold breath. 00:04:11.760 --> 00:04:14.060 align:middle line:90% A bellwether." 00:04:14.060 --> 00:04:20.000 align:middle line:90%