WEBVTT

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Thanks, Tommy.

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I would have worn my Adidas
tracksuit with my headband

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if I knew that was
going to be part of it.

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Thank you, everyone for coming.

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Thank you, Ander, for
arranging all this.

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And thank you to the Poetry
Center for having us and having

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the series.

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I thought-- can
you hear me well?

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I thought I would begin
from the beginning

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and just read for
a little while.

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And there's an
epigraph here that--

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from, of course, Revelation.

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"And whosoever was not found
written in the book of life

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was cast into the lake of fire."

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"Because a picture
is a sort of dream,

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the big moon circles
the whirling Earth

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that follows our
little burning star.

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And my father hasn't
entered the third state.

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He's not stressed out here
in the back woods of nowhere

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becoming the ground.

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All the stars are flying away.

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The universe empty now.

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My father empty by
the moon's glare

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until he's all shadow and
light, beautiful almost.

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So overexposed he could be
a young man in a photograph.

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Light seconds above,
orbiting hollowly its lens,

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always backward into
the night that was.

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Clicks a portrait of the
artist as a young bomb.

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We measure the future
by measuring the past.

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So where did he go?

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Where did the light
go that was his body?

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The blood that cycled his veins,
the too bright picture of him

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with his sweetheart--

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my mother in her saddle
oxfords, and he in his jeans.

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Their white shirts
fused into the stone

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of an Oklahoma high school.

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Six years later, he'd be flying
out of a sac base in Topeka

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up to the North Pole and back,
heavy with a single bomb.

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And the other things, I know he
dreamed of a wife and two kids,

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of a tall house
inside the spiraling

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cloud of Georgia suburbs.

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I know he dreamed of moon
travel weekends and the art

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of amateur photography.

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What about the pictures never
taken of his sunken farm

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and flooded fields?

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And where did the light go that
was his last smile as he slept

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and shivered in the empty air?

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We've seen the end,
having dreamed it.

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A cosmological
sadness leaving no one

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left to measure the last
gesture of the last thinking

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subject, when the lights
go out in the stars.

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He lies in state.

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I consider this.

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And now somewhere
in the far pines,

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a mockingbird spits
a strange tune.

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Maybe Charlie Parker
edged into Bob Wills.

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And its 1954 all over again.

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My father on leave and fallen
three sheets to the wind,

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lying in his new suit
under a hurtling sky.

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Just beyond and in
all new directions,

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the animals move upon
the Earth at night.

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Chapter 1.

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I snapped off the cardboard
back of the wooden triangle

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and took it out.

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A slight, musty smell
rose from my hands,

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filled as it were with the
thing that had been locked up

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for several years now.

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Dusty stars clung to my
fingers while lines of color

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tumbled across the floor.

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Maybe you started
with the stripes,

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I thought, kneeling down
inside the four corners.

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Maybe it was mostly luck,
luck and accumulation,

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like folding a map.

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Even halfway through,
I felt lucky--

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turning a quick
corner into three

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points like a child
making paper triangles.

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But reaching the end, I saw
the same old picture again.

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My last row is
twisted and dangling

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beneath the field of stars.

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I wondered if I
should try once more.

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Wasn't it a matter
of simple geometry?

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Easy crease and tuck, like
the soldiers did on TV.

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Yet I failed every time
I had tried to fold it.

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Over and over,
I'd felt compelled

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to correct the improperly shaped
thing in its cheap display

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case.

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And over and over, my
efforts had come to bad ends.

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So I stuffed Old Glory
back into its container--

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blue patch of stars
jutting out unevenly

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against crooked stripes.

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I hoped the neighbors
wouldn't notice

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the flag case tucked
beneath my arm,

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even as I'd have to explain it.

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I have to say I was taking
it, my father's burial flag,

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on a little trip.

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That I was going
to carry it with me

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through the back
roads of Alabama

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on a kind of pilgrimage.

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And of course, I couldn't
stop there on the loaded word

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'pilgrimage.'

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Because they'd only want more.

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I'd have to say I was
setting out on a trip

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through the low hills
of Northern Alabama,

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climbing Lookout Mountain,
hoping to descend again

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into the valley to the tri-state
crematory in noble Georgia.

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But my bewilderment about
the excursion itself,

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and about that flag,
would prevent me

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from having given a
practical description of what

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had happened at tri-state.

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Instead, I'd probably head
straight to the big trouble.

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I'd say, yes, astonishing as
it may be, my father had died,

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and his bones had
been resurrected.

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And then those same bones,
the bones of my father,

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had been abandoned at
the Tri-State Crematory

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for five years.

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The man was dead, rose again,
and dwelt among the other dead

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for a time.

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Even in the South, such
apocalyptic declarations

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might overwhelm my
devout neighbors.

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But the story required
no articles of faith.

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My father had died, and
I'd gone to his funeral.

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And he was buried in the ground.

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I saw him lowered
into the red dirt.

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My father was dead.

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And the doors of his
graves flew open,

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and he came up again
upon the Earth.

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I would have to tell all
that to my neighbors,

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because I didn't know
what else to say.

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I was setting off
to unholy ground,

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to a field with the lake
where hundreds of bodies

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once lay scattered
and alone, hoping

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that something would happen.

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For a while, I'd lived with an
image of my father lying lost

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at the Tri-State Crematory,
and I needed to change it.

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I needed to take a
ride to Tri-State

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and see where he'd
lain those long years.

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I needed to tell him goodbye--

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or hello, and goodbye.

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Or tell him nothing,
but that I had tried.

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I tried to make amends
for his troubled bones.

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And I had that flag, wrapped
up all crooked and wrong

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to prove it."