[CLAPPING]
I just wanted to thank you all for coming.
It's such a pleasure to be back home here in the Old Pueblo.
I'm only going to read a few poems from the book
tonight and share with you some new work of the next collection
that's in progress right now, that I hope
to have finished by the spring.
Let's start out with a couple of poems from the book,
poems I haven't read here.
"Caw and Crow."
"I am a crow of a man, Hamlet's last best interpretation,
preferring my body the color of absence--
dark and disconnected as a phone line, as a blank shack,
attracted by the sharp, the shiny, chrome,
and chrome's likeness, the dark reflection of self
in small things.
Listen, the finish of this lighter
doesn't show much else besides the truth.
It's a luminous machine and burns at a simple, exact task.
I've taken to skipping Sunday mass,
and the buckles on my shoes, the straps
remind me of the vows I've vowed against.
When I write about a man smoking a cigarette,
I mean my grandfather's gray wool suit, I mean me--
too distracted by the glittered cleavage of stones,
by what's been revealed, how it's accrued.
Listen, a crow will land in December snow
to leave an angel's print, clear and cold
as the light between pines.
Throaty calls break the air like flint, strike, and spark.
In the cryptic wood cutter's cottage,
grandfather serves his penance, splitting wood
for fires that will not burn."