WEBVTT

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This is the title
poem of the book--

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"Skirts and Slacks."

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I had to write a description.

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You know, publishers
wants you to write

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a description of what you
do, and it's a real pain,

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agonizing.

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You gotta -- but it helps.

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It can help them do it.

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And one of the
things that I told

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them was that I wanted to tell
certain truths of feeling,

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whatever the consequences.

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I wanted to not
just bear witness

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to certain kinds of
realities but to make

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the poems enactments
of truths of feeling.

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And "Skirts and Slacks."

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"The .32 Special.

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It's Dutch masters box, still
in their bedroom closet, days

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after my mother's death, plus
my father's 30 years ago.

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I used to practice
disarming, reloading,

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putting it in my mouth for fun.

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And so, here it is again--

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but stupid woman,
Great Depression child

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scrolling tens and 20s
in macaroni boxes--

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loaded, half-cocked.

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Oh yes, shoot the
burglar in the closet,

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the cat in heat on the
fence, and Calvin Coolidge.

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She rose, rammy, close to
death, cocked up in bed

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as if pulleyed by heaven,
sometime past midnight.

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I was there to
watch her eyes wake

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for a moment enraged
and hateful toward me.

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Bone wooled with
slights of flesh,

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what certainty in
the body at its end?

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And between here and there?

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Breath stops, blood
fades, the comic head

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I'm lifting from the pillow
feels too merely anatomical

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and heavier than before."

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