WEBVTT

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And I love saying I'm
going to read five hours,

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so just settle in.

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OK.

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So this is the first hour.

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And so I graduated
from minutes to hours.

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After my daughter
was born, I was often

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given an hour to write.

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And so I would go
down to my desk,

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and I had nothing to write.

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There was no brain
left in the body--

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had come right out
with everything else.

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[LAUGHTER]

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Just dropped right out.

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But so what I
started to do is, I

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was thinking about the
minutes, and now time

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had a different
kind of connotation.

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It wasn't the body as a
clock creating an entity.

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It was this other
kind of entity,

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and the baby was up--
she had moved into time.

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And so I just
started doing these--

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I decided to do
sketches of hours.

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So this is within an hour.

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Sometimes again,
a few seconds off.

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And whatever language arose
in relation to the hours--

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what you see around--

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and I think of the drawing
itself as these are--

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I don't think of it as separate.

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It's not like this is the poem,
and that's a drawing there.

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This is the poem.

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And how they appear
in the book is,

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I typed up what I think
of as the language

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residue of the hour, and
so I'm just going to read--

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I'll show you them, but
I won't read all of them.

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I'll read a few, and
I'll start with this one.

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"First Hour's Residue."

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12:50:09 PM, the hour begins.

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When I see a button at
the middle of the hour,

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flower holding the hour's
fabric folds in place.

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How I see I drew
a flower to rhyme

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with hour in sound and shape.

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And that its eye,
the empty center,

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a wind suckles the hour's
clothe-less intentions.

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Because I am told the
hour is directional,

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the eye becomes
entangled in an arrow.

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I had thought to make a marker.

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Indicate the first line to
fit the structure of an hour.

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But that hour's arrow was
overtaken by other arrows.

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One misstep will ruin this hour.

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1:24:50 PM.

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Now, I have filled the hour's
outer petals with arrows.

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The baby cries.

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She is hungry.

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I do not suffer symmetrophobia.

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I see symmetry and
asymmetry unfold

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that is just like an hour.

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It's a Moore's arrows as gleeful
spermatozoa rushing to me.

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I see this corner pedal
of the hour peeking

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like an ancient wave, a shark's
fin, or an antique prow.

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Inside our capsized Es, curled
needles gleaming golden sharp.

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Three scales on the
minutes like those

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on the round-scaled spearfish
whose tail is bright

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glowing blue.

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I wrote minute meant
minutes inside an hour blue.

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My inside minutes are
getting slap happy.

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Divers gasp for air.

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I think seconds are peeling
off the hour or petals floating

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into a vast distance.

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Overhead, the floorboards
creak, the humans

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I love and live with.

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There seem to be spikes
at the edges of my hour

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like a gold-tipped fence.

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Who could climb an hour's fence?

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Who fall into the hole?

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1:50:48

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And I'll just show
the Second Hour.

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I'm not going to
read the Second Hour.

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There are little intervals
between the hours,

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so I'm going to read rather
than the hour and interval.

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We've graduated to hours and
the folds between minutes--

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the crumpled folds
between hours.

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They keep adding dimensions
to space, not time, why?

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The folds-- the felt
folds where the folds

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between minutes and hours.

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You may wish to mention the
old buggers in the bathtub.

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No, thanks.

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The night line descends.

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Carcajou, you
wolverine of night.

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An hour, an iron collar relaxing
into the undone threads.

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Night-- night's itself.

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A morning, an hour arrives
tense as street lights reflected

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in rain gutters.

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An hour shines like a wound.

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The debris of hours
accumulated in the face.

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An hour like a wrecking ball.

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An hour in mid-demolition.

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A pirouette performance.

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An hour smashing,
wounding the face.

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You speak only of an
hour's destruction.

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Here, spicules were built,
assembled into a needle-like

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house--

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transparent, airy,
gorgeous, constructed

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to withstand all time.

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What?

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Says body.

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This hour is--

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I don't know if you
recognize, but what

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the background is, it's the
printout from an amniocentesis.

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So it's this really weird thing.

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You get a photograph in
the mail of your child's

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genetic structure.

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So it's like what's going
to be built from this?

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This is what you get.

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And you can see
that I knew that I

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was going to get a girl because
there are two Xs and no Y.

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And so with this hour,
I took that photograph,

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and made a collage
of it, and sort of

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did little imaginings of what
would happen over each pair.

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They don't really tell
you which gene is mine,

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and which gene is his.

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I want to know.

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And actually, this
is a photograph

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of her taken in a photo
booth in Phoenix that

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also got incorporated.

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And then a little
insect wing coming off

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of what would have
been her elbow.

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"Third Hour's Residue."

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3:44:45 We come to the
dark double X and wonder--

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what does a chromosome worry?

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Whose genes carry ovary?

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Make a face.

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What name arrive on the face?

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What shape?

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When born, she drew a
line to the first mother,

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from whom was the
first mother burned.

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There were several
shapes to edit--

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a knot in the knee,
a string of cancer.

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These genes like loose
squiggles of time.

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I mean, twine, which
will fray at the ankle--

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time.

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Go dust at the calf.

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The hour does a face.

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Unsquare the hour of its making.

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Her elbow bleeds to a wing.

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A sibyl propped on
22 pairs of evidence.

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Part of an hour is erasure, like
genotype stomping on phenotype.

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A blur at the edges of
the thought box and wet

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paint around the caption.

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Her microscopically
visible aspects--

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46, XX.

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In her haploid cell, she
sneezes to show she's--

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the quote marks keep
falling off her.

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Ghosted the teeth of radiance.

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Petals-- letters like petals.

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The hour takes
tweezers to its hairs.

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4:46:35

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"Fourth Hour's Residue."

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Language hangs from the
hour in crystalline repose.

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To set it in motion, must we?

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The hour's stalk is
feathered and gay.

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I saw it before it arrived,
shoeless, helpless, speechless.

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Medusa dripping
poison A's, each B

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a sting, a stamp because
daylight savings saddens

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the ghost.

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It's amazing how
hungry an hour can be.

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Hand me something
to pillow the hour.

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Protect it from its
own devouring minutes.

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I had to do things to this
hour, I would never have wished.

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In the hour's-heart's
garden of earthly delights,

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a minute sat with gnashing
teeth waiting on a rock.

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The human drips from herself
where she hangs in time.

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Her minutes are bleeding.

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Her bream a broken-mouthed
minute, as if

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the minute, as if the minute,
broken-mouthed machine.

00:10:46.750 --> 00:10:52.390 align:middle line:90%


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And that is the Fifth Hour.

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And I'm not going to
read the Fifth Hour.

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I'm going to read
that interleave,

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and that will be the
last piece I'll read,

00:11:07.280 --> 00:11:09.650 align:middle line:90%
and do we do a Q&A afterwards?

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Do we?

00:11:10.610 --> 00:11:12.050 align:middle line:90%
Do-- Yeah?

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Or no?

00:11:13.670 --> 00:11:17.810 align:middle line:84%
Short-- and then we'll
do a short Q&A. Yeah, OK.

00:11:17.810 --> 00:11:20.090 align:middle line:90%
This house is a little haunted.

00:11:20.090 --> 00:11:23.480 align:middle line:90%
It's my body house.

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Bones rising to the
surface in the night,

00:11:26.330 --> 00:11:29.930 align:middle line:90%
sinking back before daylight.

00:11:29.930 --> 00:11:35.480 align:middle line:84%
What parent pain we carry
several more than 40 years?

00:11:35.480 --> 00:11:37.790 align:middle line:84%
The way a crumpled
can will flash

00:11:37.790 --> 00:11:41.000 align:middle line:84%
from the roadside in
certain angles of light

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like a flashing eye, or what
derives of the desiring heart

00:11:46.370 --> 00:11:48.920 align:middle line:90%
blinking in the dark.

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I guess, I'd say
plurality bleeds in.

00:11:53.300 --> 00:11:55.610 align:middle line:90%
I emptied the body satchel out.

00:11:55.610 --> 00:11:57.560 align:middle line:90%
Of course, it was a womb.

00:11:57.560 --> 00:12:01.220 align:middle line:84%
Cat's claws, whiskers,
hair nuts, snarl husks--

00:12:01.220 --> 00:12:05.690 align:middle line:84%
everything that collected in the
sheets round to a fine powder

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nearly erased by history--

00:12:08.000 --> 00:12:09.860 align:middle line:90%
a day's work.

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We named her Evergrace.

00:12:12.590 --> 00:12:15.290 align:middle line:84%
She knits herself
and everything head,

00:12:15.290 --> 00:12:19.340 align:middle line:84%
makes herself into a scary
animal, a scarred star

00:12:19.340 --> 00:12:24.570 align:middle line:90%
or some blank thing from afar.

00:12:24.570 --> 00:12:30.330 align:middle line:84%
This was a girl trying all the
things to get from baby to big.

00:12:30.330 --> 00:12:35.775 align:middle line:84%
The live cat claws the night
for sounds like sharpened rain.

00:12:35.775 --> 00:12:41.520 align:middle line:90%


00:12:41.520 --> 00:12:42.630 align:middle line:90%
And now I stay here.

00:12:42.630 --> 00:12:44.730 align:middle line:90%
[APPLAUSE]

00:12:44.730 --> 00:12:46.580 align:middle line:90%
Thank you.

00:12:46.580 --> 00:12:57.000 align:middle line:90%