Does anybody know what time it is?
How long have I been reading?
[INAUDIBLE VOICE FROM AUDIENCE]
Oh, I wonder-- I'm sorry.
I'm keeping you a little longer.
There's only two more poems.
Oh, no, I'm not.
I keep thinking the reading started at 8:00.
It started-- I told all these people 8 o'clock.
And it's 8:30, isn't it?
So I don't have--
I have 15 minutes to go down.
Well, that's good.
This is called "New Crops for a Free Man."
And I really like it and I keep reading it,
but I suddenly realized yesterday
that I'm tired of reading it now.
"New Crops for a Free Man."
"I drop the torch of rags in a bucket of water
and watched the field burn.
Behind me, another fire, my woman.
And the sheets wrinkled and stiff from heat and sweat,
throws them back and rises.
She cracks her knuckles, leans from the window and yells,
but I keep my head turned toward the thing I understand.
She's hot from a match I never lit, and strokes
her breasts whose wicks, her nipples of flame,
burn holes in her hands and me.
Go back to sleep.
I don't need you now.
I just want the dirt under my fingernails
to become mountains, to listen to my heart
beat inside the rocks, and scream as my own death slides
into bed with her ass bloody and sweet when I lick it,
one stalk of wheat no man can pull from the ground
and live to eat."