WEBVTT

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And what I would like to do is
what every poet wants to do--

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and they usually
indulge themselves--

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and that is read new stuff.

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And I was telling Alison that
the best quotation I've read,

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and I always forget who said
the thing, but was a writer

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was asked, which of your
works is your favorite?

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And he says the next one.

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[LAUGHTER]

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You know, and so there is
one thing I want to tell you.

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I put a new book of
poems together recently.

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They are poems that I've written
in the last five years or so,

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and I used the storytellers
technique of writing in scenes,

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not always in
chronological order.

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But as I was putting
my book together,

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I found these patterns, and
that means you're getting old--

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when your work starts
having patterns.

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And so one of the
patterns I found

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was my father retired
from the Navy,

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and two years later he
died in a car accident,

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which made no sense to anyone.

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It never does, but my mother
spent 25 years waiting for him

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to come home and then he died.

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And he's been a strange
influence in my life

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as I'm sure everyone can say the
same, but he was absent so much

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and was such an
authority figure when

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he was there, that I have just
these conflicting feelings.

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I both adored him and
resented the hell out of him.

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He instilled the need
for an education in us,

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and yet he reminded me
every day that I was a woman

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and had to watch
out every minute.

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So I have to go
through life carefully.

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So I have to explore but
never exceed the bounds

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and stay on the straight
and narrow road,

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and that's really confusing
for a girl to come up with.

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And so I wrote all
these poems about him

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that I hope express both
my love and my resentment.

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Some things I never got
to discuss with him,

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and my poetry is
sort of a resolution

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of this communication
that never happened.

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Anyway, I will
start by telling you

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that the three poems I will
read you now for some reason

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have to do with
war and conflict.

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My father joined the army
when he got married--

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when he married my mother.

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Left her four months
pregnant with me.

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I did not know him for the
first two years of my life,

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and then when he came back, he
took me out of my mother's bed,

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and what he brought with him
was a crib that he put me in.

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So I didn't like him
for about two weeks,

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and so this first poem
is about my father coming

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home from Panama and being
the life of the party

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at my birthday party--

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my second birthday
party, and it's

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called "Lessons of the Past."

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I was born the year
my father learned

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to march in step with other
men, to hit bull's eyes,

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to pose for sepia
photos in dress uniform

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outside Panamanian nightspots--

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pictures he would send home
to his pregnant teenage bride

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inscribed, "To my best girl."

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My birth made her a Madonna,
a husbandless young woman

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with a legitimate child
envied by all the tired women

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of the pueblo as she strolled
my carriage down dirt roads

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both of us dressed in
fine clothes bought

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with army checks.

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When he came home,
he bore gifts--

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silk pajamas from the Orient for
her, a pink iron crib for me.

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People filled our
house to welcome him.

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He played Elvis loud and sang
along in his new English.

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She sat on his lap and
laughed at everything.

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They roasted a suckling
pig out on the patio.

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Later, no one could explain
how I had climbed over the iron

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bars and into the fire.

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Hands lifted me
up quickly but not

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before the tongues
had licked my curls.

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There is a picture
of me taken soon

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after, my hair clipped close
to my head, my eyes enormous,

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about to overflow with fear.

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I look like a miniature of
one of those women in Paris

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after World War II--

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hair shorn, being paraded
down the streets in shame

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for having loved the enemy.

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But then things changed and
some nights he didn't come home.

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I remember hearing her
cry in the kitchen.

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I sat on the rocking chair
waiting for my cocoa,

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learning how to count--

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uno, dos, tres, cuatro, cinco--

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on my toes so that when
he came in smelling

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strong and sweet the
sugar cane syrup,

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I could surprise my papacito--

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who liked his girl smart.

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Who didn't like crybabies--

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with a new lesson learned well.

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