Hello Thank you, Lisa for the introduction
and Frances and the Poetry Center.
And everyone has been so kind to me
and I'm very, very happy to be here.
With that introduction it made me
wish that I brought a poem that I didn't, but I'll
tell you what the title is.
I've been writing poems, ant poems recently and one of them
the title is an ant in the mouth of Madonna behind locked doors.
And I'll just let you imagine the poem
and read it some other point in time.
So I'll start with a few ant poems this one is called,
We the heathens.
Last night we go to have Chinese for dinner,
and my friend who is visiting from another planet
is horrified and perhaps a little excited
also, until I explain to her that we are having Chinese food
not Chinese people.
We go to a place that serves not dumpling soup which I love,
but soup dumpling with which I am unfamiliar.
The soup is actually inside of rich dumpling
and everyone develops their own system of eating it.
As we poke our chopsticks voraciously
into the folds of the crispy fried whole exploded fish which
is delicious, it becomes clear to me
that we would have no right to be shocked,
or mortified, or outraged, or even surprised, or upset,
should some creature from another planet
descend upon the Earth, pluck our people
off the ground fry us up tearing away at our flesh with relish.
My friend Morton, a sweet and gentle man,
is sitting quietly beside me with his uneaten hamburger.
I don't know how he managed to get himself
a hamburger in a Chinese restaurant,
but there he sits and there sits as hamburger with the top off.
Morton says he wants live ants on his burger
but does not want to go hunting for ants himself.
So he's waiting for the ants to come
to the burger at which point he will put the top bun back on
and eat.
I tell him that he will probably have better luck
with that outside.
And he says, that's a good idea, thanks.
And then goes outside with his hamburger
and that's the last I ever see of him.