WEBVTT

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This is the final poem.

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I have allergies.

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I take a strong
medication for it,

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and it dries out my
throat, just cracking.

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It's all right, I
think I can make this.

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This feels like a
long poem, to me,

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it's really relatively
short for what

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I do when I do a long poem.

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It's called "The Red
Fiddle in the Moon Parlor."

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It's for a student of mine, who
is sort of eccentric, perhaps,

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psychotic.

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And I think that's
why I liked him.

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I mean, I enjoyed the confusion
deciding which it was.

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And he always-- he never
made it easy for me.

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I was very fond of
the man in any event.

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It's called "The Red
Fiddle in the Moon Parlor."

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One.

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You remember the straw hat Mele
filled with icy, natal plums

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as you sat on a low
balcony in Nogales.

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Now, you are driving the
old truck out of Phoenix.

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And in just 10
minutes, you'll be

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sitting on a stool in the
open, tin parlors milking cows.

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You're 17.

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You call yourself "the Sonoran."

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And Mele will be 17
on Christmas day.

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You both believe
that she's pregnant.

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This dirt road runs
along a dry wash.

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And out across the
desert, the smoke trees

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puff up among the
indigo agave scrub.

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She embarrassed you, at dawn,
at that abandoned railway

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station in the Sierra Madres.

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The boarded windows with faded
handbills and a single bell

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working out in the hills.

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An old toothless woman
sat beside you on a bench.

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Her scarf had a
dead locust on it.

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And Mele began to undress,
covering her breasts

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with the sombrero she had
made from the dry head

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of a sunflower.

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She dropped her skirt and
stepped into a large rain

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barrel.

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She sank in the water
with just her yellow curls

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like fallen aspen
leaves on the surface.

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Two.

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Two hours of daylight left
and then 12 hours of night.

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For 14 hours, you will sit
on the milking stool and tug

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at your lovely cows that
listen through the night

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while you recite to them
two pages of Chekhov you've

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translated.

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You ask them if this time,
you've got it just right.

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Their teats are peach-colored,
rough, like garnet sheets.

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Mele was put on
a bus for Oregon.

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And after a month, she
still doesn't write.

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A 111 cows on a desert farm.

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Your thumb over your little
finger, both under the palm,

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and the three remaining
fingers are, you say,

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a rusty trident drawing
down, stretching the teats,

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the yellow milk filling
the pails until dawn.

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Under the black sky
with its patch of stars,

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you've named the cows Swan,
Charles's Wain, Orion, Mons.

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You tell these
girls that soon they

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can eat the blossoming lupine,
phlox, and the willow-orchids

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by the artesian pond.

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Two other workers
outside the open barn

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are playing ball
with a coyote-melon,

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and they laugh at you.

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Your long hair, thick glasses,
la barba negra, and your poems.

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You drink tequila in the
raw milk to keep going.

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You say, you can
ignore the black widow

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spider who nests in the corner
of the barn beside the bales.

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You've named her Obsidian.

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The red fiddle on her
stomach, you tell her,

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is worthy of Chagall.

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This is three.

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When it rains at night into
the open barn beside the palms,

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you sing in a canvas
poncho to your cows.

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Mele's name you've
changed to Verbena.

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"Not a word from
Verbena in two months."

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You said that you were going
back to the Sierra Madres

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to find an old woman
with a pearl white insect

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on her scarf, to ask her what
she remembered of Mele's bath.

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Could she describe the
girl's shoulders, her legs?

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Was there a moon?

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Was the girl's name
known to anyone?

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Did the dish run
away with a spoon?

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You laugh.

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Again, you change
Verbena's name.

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This time, to Cenzina,
but then, back to Verbena.

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She's finally wrote
from Portland,

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saying you were the
father of a little girl.

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She asks, would you
like to name her?

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You settle on Beth.

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Just Beth.

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You said once the boss at
the farm took a photo of Mele

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and you in the barn.

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You saw it and said,
"virgin with child."

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A manger in the desert,
Bethlehem, Beth.

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I preferred, Dalea.

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You laughed.

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And now, you're gone.

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Your cows must be
giving vinegar.

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The old truck you
probably abandon somewhere

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in the Dakotas.

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You might have gone
to Oregon or Canada.

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You said that, one day,
you would turn up missing.

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Not to worry.

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You're probably a dishwasher.

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The dish and the
spoon, or a cold night

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with stars walking
back to your room

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must remind you of your
girls in their barn.

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I remember you sitting on
the milking stool, the broken

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laces of your shoes, and
how you put a little salt

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in your tongue, swallowing
tequila, and then grinning,

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sucks straight from the
teat of Orion or Swan.

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You said, only a
king may kill a king.

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Mele wrote, I opened her
letter in the evening.

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She said, you lived together for
three weeks, the only work you

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found was in a slaughterhouse.

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And you were still
naming animals.

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You walked them from the
trains under the stars

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and into a room with chutes.

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That your name was now Joe.

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Just Joe.

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That you accused Mele
of being unfaithful.

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That you stopped naming animals.

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You couldn't eat.

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You were certain the
government was grinding

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cattle bones into our milk.

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You left her a note--

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I'm going to another country.

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You went to Canada.

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Climbed stairs to the
roof of a tall building.

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Mele said you would drink her
breast milk, that each evening

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you brought the baby a balloon.

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She said, "I'm sorry.

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But in Canada, under
a clear night sky,

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Joe heard a little dog laugh.

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Joe jumped off the moon."

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Thank you.

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[APPLAUSE]

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