Thank you, Allie.
I Just want to thank--
Allie has done an amazing job pulling this reading together.
It's been wonderful to work with you,
and I want to welcome Tyler.
I just-- the few times I've met you so far
have just been great.
I'm really looking forward to seeing you a lot,
and I'm really excited for you being here.
And thanks to everyone at the Poetry Center.
It's such an honor to be here at this podium.
I actually am going to read mostly from newer work tonight,
and I guess I'm just going to start.
This first group of poems is from a manuscript
called "I Met a Man."
How is it I came to hear this rupture,
this rake to take me out of the stutter, to use me
and the cooler break, better gone than good?
How is it the scrabble means a school of carnal futures,
where I came to pardon flamingos, palms, and feet?
Motors and handrails fashioned from coast
care and carry me, a marvel of drier times,
a house of magical witness, but bones and bones in a forest
of marks and manifest.
We were jealous mortals, warier than I imagined,
a home of hunters.
If removal has anything to do with this, I will find out.
When they walk into a current, they will know.
They will not scatter.
How is it the scrabble means a colossal rip?