WEBVTT

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Lois assigned me
a poem last night.

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She said if you stayed
at the Poetry Cottage,

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you had to mix it up
with the ghosts in there

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and that William
Stafford had written

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a poem about the birds
and flowers waking him

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in the morning.

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And so she assigned me a poem.

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And I knew I wouldn't
be able to hear

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the birds because the
windows were painted shut.

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[LAUGHTER]

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So I'm going to
take this big risk

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and read you the poem I wrote.

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It's a first draft.

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Remember that.

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And it's called "In Bed Looking
at Myself" or "William Stafford

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Slept Here".

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[LAUGHTER]

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That's the only time
I'm ever going to give

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that other title, however.

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It's a very serious poem.

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"Bare legs sprawled and
bent against pressed sheets,

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I see my skin is not white
but some mix of pigment

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as difficult to catch as
colors squeezed from tubes

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on a white plate, thinned with
water, the effect at any moment

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washed out by a
drift of attention

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so that the pigment
lifts from the paper

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and floats on the
surface tension of water

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without direction.

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Trying to catch the fragile
light of these legs seen

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as wildflowers my teacher
stuck in tin coffee cans

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this summer, inviting us
to paint the impossible.

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Did she call them freesias?

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Said she'd thrown out
seed from a random mix.

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And conch-pink,
flesh-colored lilies

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sprang up in exquisite
excess, fringed

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with muted green and
somewhat scraggly

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leaves which served simply
as ground and contrast,

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not an assertion of
their own shapeliness.

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In this room, I've been given
a blue chest of drawers,

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blue door, and the
nectarine lowest

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placed between two pears now
sticky in the cracks where

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my fingers meet and bend.

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Nobody knows where I am, a body
placed in an unfamiliar room,

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spread against folds
of white cotton,

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pit of nectarine
glistening in hand,

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hot Tucson air pressing up
to the window, round moon.

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I look down and see my
nipples, pink and erect,

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sensing moisture, Think of A
in San Francisco this morning,

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still drowsy under sheets,
me packing summer dresses

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and light perfume, easing
David out of 7:00 AM dreams

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to enter the world of
binder and combed hair.

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Then, looking back to the bed,
A's eyes suddenly open upon me.

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No words.

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Moving towards him to see what
shifts had occurred in sleep,

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finger tracing his
lips, skin listening

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to see if he desired
me, and did I want him?

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Feeling the current
begin, pulling me down

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to his hot,
sleep-heavy mouth, eyes

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closed, descending blindly,
and where his fingers moved,

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and where his cock
caught me delicately,

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and his whispers in my hair
I couldn't hear, arising,

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a sweet ache collecting.

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At the foot of my
bed, the beginning

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edge of sunrise seen earlier
through the window now

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giving form to the
bay's little ships,

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leaping rooftops, throwing
its pink light over us."

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[APPLAUSE]

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