I'm going to read--
just come back to the first book I
was reading from which is Earliest Worlds, which
I suppose was probably not even out last time I was here
but I maybe was reading poems from it.
And I think I had just written the start of the "California"
poem when I came--
I think a few months before it had started that poem, which
is kind of amazing to me.
OK.
"Essay."
"When I think of sex a moist fog--"
and there's a reference to the Leslie Scalapino in here
for those of you--
or to her poems, I should say.
"When I think of sex, some people think of seals barking,
but I think of shrimp and bleach.
When I think of sex with some people,
I think of cones and rods, but they think of flywheels.
When some people think of sex, they
think of plastic and rubber and Frisbees,
but when I think of them and sex,
I think of international ultimate championships
and of grass stains on the knees and flies
and zippers and X's over their eyes and they are dead.
And when I think of them and sex,
I think I do not want to have sex with a dead person
until I am dead."
That's-- you see, poetry is didactic.
There are things to be learned.
They had a really hard time translating that
into Slovenian because they don't learn about cones
and rods in Slovenia.
So you must learn about cones and rods.
[INAUDIBLE]