WEBVTT

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So this is the first reading
I'm giving since I found out

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the news that a very important
person to me died in February.

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Some of you may know him.

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He lived in Tucson
for most of his life.

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Jeremy Isajiw died.

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He was 35.

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He was someone-- he was
"one of those people"

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is what I want to say, but
he was more unique than that.

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He was the kind
of person that one

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meets at just the right time.

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And our lives intersected when
we really needed each other.

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And we didn't have a
lot of friends in common

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and so I didn't find out about
his death until a few months

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after he died.

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He was very much
a survivor of HIV.

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He was an important activist in
the fight against HIV and AIDS,

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in this city and elsewhere.

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And he died from an
unrelated, precipitous lung

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infection, double pneumonia,
in the hospital in February.

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I'm very lucky that the
last memory I have of him,

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I think almost the last
thing he said to me publicly,

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was-- he was with
a group of friends.

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He was very much the kind
of the star prince of one

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of Tucson's underworlds.

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And I didn't have a lot
of access to that world.

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But he was with some friends.

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He hushed everyone when
I approached the table.

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And he said, this is the guy
who made me want to keep living.

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So I met Jeremy days after his
diagnosis, in 2006 and 2007.

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And I want to say to him
that the feeling is mutual.

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And in his memory and
with hopes for comfort

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for his husband,
Ben, and his mother,

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who was very devoted to him,
Sheila, I want to read--

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not a poem, because
I don't really

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have a poem that I
wrote for Jeremy.

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And so my partner, John, said,
why don't you just dedicate

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the reading to him?

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And so that's what I'm doing.

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And I selected some
poems that have

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sympathies with who
I knew Jeremy to be,

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including that first poem.

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This is then called
"Lifespan Addenda."

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It's the first poem in the
last section of this book.

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It's not in parts.

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But now that I've written
the book and it's out there,

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I kind of wish that it was.

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There's a sort of
little prefatory moment,

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and then there's three sections
belonging to three birds.

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So I won't say them, but it
could be in sections "Grackle,"

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"Buzzard," and "Pheasant."

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So you might have that in mind.

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"Lifespan Addenda"

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"Auspex in hospice, each
of us, home forsworn,

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should hope to be visited again.

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Three birds come back, crisis
apparition or provident

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delivery, searching the air in
a reverie you might announce.

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And they'd grant you that, or
I, present for astonishment

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purposes in moments
everything reset.

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The way Guy Davenport said
a bird'd be, an attachment,

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mailer-daemon, returning
for review ones

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that rook, a parliament
gathering singly.

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The grackle above the
backlot xeriscape two feet

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levitated for his mate.

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Pima County, el
milagro, Arizona.

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A casino gush of nonpareil,
openly winning a minute long.

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All that ultra black
to undo his lover did.

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Nature spent a fortune.

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One day into night
I got it right.

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The colors trail, trail away.

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The Christ Event obviating
adverbs, as it were.

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Not even once, not finally.

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Back when I had
everything to want.

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The bird jumping into the
hold in the air, attached

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to whatever time is attached to.

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Where for a stretch
coming off the bridge

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to the barrier
island the causeway

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veins the isthmus entirely.

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The stone crabs
cross the street,

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and gravid must, for
less brackish hatch.

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And a turkey buzzard
gets the picture.

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Never been eyed, not that
way, since, seed sown in.

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The midpoint of my
life now you see.

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Interruptions across
and the causeway too.

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Here I am breaking the horizon.

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Something unwinding
still in the car,

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slowing another half mile before
the turnout came, an antidote

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and doubleback.

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Causeway transposition-- from
yanking the wet sweet back body

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out of the cracked
case, a pause,

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her fearsome red rule
to return through.

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In the suffusion of a rich
old woods' last new growth,

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Election Day ferns
capitalize on shred light,

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an Idaho of understory
greener than spring.

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Like this, the footfalls far
from home, his and mine and his

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and mine.

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And now, again, the dotty canopy
and the sink sensation focus

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upward sends.

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When did the world start so
the ghost berry bush, by dark,

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is a grown-down constellation
and the newt in his hand

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wasabi?

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The void, chasing
the ample rush,

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heart-level, like a drawer
receding into the mountainside.

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Heavily the pheasant pushes
her flight deeper in."

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