WEBVTT

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Thank you.

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It's a pleasure to be here.

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I want to thank Gail and Frances
and the Poetry Center and Dan

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and Peter for doing all the
work [? to get me ?] here.

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I'm going to do a
mixture of things today.

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Some poetry, some
performance work.

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And I'm going to
start with a poem

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that I generally start
my readings with.

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It's called "Grandfather
and Grandmother in Love."

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And it's about imagining
my grandparents in bed

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together, which is what you
can do with your grandparents.

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You can't really do
that with your parents,

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but you can do that
with your grandparents.

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So my grandfather
wrote haiku and he also

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played the biwa, which is a
Japanese stringed instrument.

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Otoo-san and okaa-san are
father and mother in Japanese.

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And so, just imagining
them together and...

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"Grandfather and
Grandmother in Love."

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"Now I will ask for
the one true word

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beyond betrayal that
creaks and buoys,

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like the bed springs
used by the bodies that

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begot the bodies that begot me.

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Now I will think of the moon
bluing the white sheets soaked

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in sweat.

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That heard him whisper a
haiku of clover, azalea.

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The cry of the
cuckoo, complaints

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of moles and beetles, blight and
bad debts, as the biwa's spirit

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bubbled up between them,
its song quavering.

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Now I take this word, crack it
like a seed between the teeth.

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Spit it out in the world to root
in the loam of his green house

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roses.

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Let it leave the sweet
taste of teriyaki.

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A grain of her rice
lodged in my molars.

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In my nostrils, a faint,
hot breath of sake.

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Now as otoo-san, okaa-san
drift towards each other,

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there reverberates
the ran of lovers.

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And the ship of the past
burst into that other world.

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And she, still teasing,
pushes him away.

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Swats his hand, a
pesky tickling fly.

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Then turns to his
face that cries out

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laughing as he hauls her
in, trawling the currents,

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gathering a sea
that seems endless,

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depths a boy dreams of,
where flounder, dolphin,

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fluorescent fins, fish with
wings spill before him.

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Glittering scales.

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And letting slip the
net, he dives under.

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And night washes over
them, slipping from sight.

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Just the soft shush
of waves, drifting

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groundswells echoing the
knocking tide of morning."

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