WEBVTT

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I'll finish with a poem called
"My Daughter Commoner Garden."

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Title comes from a documentary
on the Pixies, '90s rock band.

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David Bowie in the documentary
says in his best upper crust

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accent, something like the
Pixies were quite good,

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but you know they wrote
about quite commoner garden

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types of subjects.

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There's a little reference
to Melville's confidence man.

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And by and large, the
poem is in dialogue with

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or is trying to write through
the Black paintings of Goya

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that are in the Prado.

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The most famous of which is
Saturn eating his children,

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but that one's not in this poem.

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"My Daughter Commoner Garden."

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Below a half moon, the
garden parking lot we take

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opened impassive stone.

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Empty dead and clean
accent allows for pun

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as Melville makes.

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At every category,
its inversion.

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At every claim, its life.

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The black Guinea cripple
taken for a whole operator.

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The coin for a counterfeit.

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The good man for a wordy one.

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Let's marshal our
figures for danger.

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Twilight and gall for
lonesomeness Generation

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and night for dissolution,
for hearth, for abandon.

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Like a Pawnee from ambush foams
the Yellow Jacket Missouri.

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Make or listen carefully
for where they stand.

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Goya's Dos Viejos circa
1820 to '23, still I learn.

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Old man sinks into his own gaze.

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Simian double lays a dark
hand on his shoulder,

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leans in, intimate
whisper, death

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grow loud with each of us.

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The hollow tubes of cattails
bring air down into their roots

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a settler shack replica, and
they will recreate our house

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and say, this was his
bag, this your bear.

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His nightstand here
in Atlas theater

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drawn around this
bend bargain struck.

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Here, the rich give
this land for expansion.

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16 ducks, running water, girls
cast in bronze, benevolence,

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a circle of crepe myrtles, Texas
silver leaf or liar's scrub.

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Death duels by club legal
in Catalonia and Brugada.

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Goya's men in their
dust to the knees

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or float above at colossal.

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Stuck, they seem
the land itself.

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So much little things a
decade or gravel of fire road

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find their place.

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The nudging heart doesn't tire.

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It should.

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Simple chickadees came from
the suburbs on a man's t-shirt.

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Sweet genius composite
anxious body they make.

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Just like this mountain.

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It's the same speed.

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Somewhere, death
is all time coming.

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It events, it invents, the
connections between light poles

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pays the work crews
and the lights come on.

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See, heart, you should rest.

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Money is moving all around.

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I look at the other mountain.

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Our gazes make two men
called valley and plain.

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Light spends most of the day
on my one side away from them.

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And waking up just happens as
do the powdered waves of car

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packs released by the light.

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Traffic, not spray of light from
transcendence or straight light

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that sometimes silhouettes an
owl on the cable above Blair

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Street.

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So your find yourself
with maybe the old hungers

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a little quieter.

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But no less friendly.

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No less ready to turn a warm
smile upon us as you come down

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our row of cubicles
circa 2008 to 2010.

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We are together, you and
I, server and patients.

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We are together, you and
I, wolf and phenotype.

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We are together, you and
I, rainwater and hillside.

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We are together, you and
I, glory and people say.

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We are together, you and I,
photograph and people say.

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Still, Saturday,
cool season turn,

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abuses the old prairie house.

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Mockingbird swoops
cross traffic.

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Beads hold fast on the car hoods
making mirrors for everyone

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for free.

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Finally, we see
our week's efforts

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covered by clean cool sheets.

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With one night's sleep,
smell sweet shoulder oils

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it's still Saturday,
and the nation a small

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and floating three
inches above its land.

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No corner of which doesn't
offer itself as night.

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I'll be Michael.

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The universe can be Lisa Marie.

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Goya's fate raked in dark gray.

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White death burn simple faced
float above the yellow plain.

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You have to believe no
matter what the universe is

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as exactly as it needs to be.

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Along this ridgescape the
people mark the hills.

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Dark hills and rock and dirt
burnt soil about the folk

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play their parts.

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You have to believe
this massive panorama

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that we are set close to
witches in the painting whose

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grouped bulk fills the frame
and a cabro breathes out,

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sweet Earth, return.

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The bulk of witches made
animate by their bright eyes.

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You have to believe it is quiet
outside my exchange of glances

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with the witches.

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Pretty, blurry, pink
mouth pushing out to land.

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Witches to land.

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Help me make a figure
for our fear of return.

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Life gets made
but not because we

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had to carry the
debtors' burden of faith.

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Fuck the universe and
its way of opening

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its carapace into wings.

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One day, you get in the
car and trust your dad

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and ignore the showered ones
he talks to to get things from.

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Somehow, frogs get all
the way up this hill

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find an underside of a succulent
for to tuck their nut and eggs.

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We are at the edge
of the country.

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Upon the face of the waters,
Japan sends its things.

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China and New Jersey
send their containers.

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The sun knows where it sleeps.

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No one is coming to kill us.

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No one is coming to
cut off our hands.

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Thank you.

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[APPLAUSE]

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