WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.700 align:middle line:90% 00:00:02.700 --> 00:00:06.810 align:middle line:84% So this is the first reading I'm giving since I found out 00:00:06.810 --> 00:00:11.748 align:middle line:84% the news that a very important person to me died in February. 00:00:11.748 --> 00:00:12.790 align:middle line:90% Some of you may know him. 00:00:12.790 --> 00:00:15.480 align:middle line:84% He lived in Tucson for most of his life. 00:00:15.480 --> 00:00:17.430 align:middle line:90% Jeremy Isajiw died. 00:00:17.430 --> 00:00:20.130 align:middle line:90% He was 35. 00:00:20.130 --> 00:00:24.300 align:middle line:84% He was someone-- he was "one of those people" 00:00:24.300 --> 00:00:26.910 align:middle line:84% is what I want to say, but he was more unique than that. 00:00:26.910 --> 00:00:28.950 align:middle line:84% He was the kind of person that one 00:00:28.950 --> 00:00:30.840 align:middle line:90% meets at just the right time. 00:00:30.840 --> 00:00:34.935 align:middle line:84% And our lives intersected when we really needed each other. 00:00:34.935 --> 00:00:36.810 align:middle line:84% And we didn't have a lot of friends in common 00:00:36.810 --> 00:00:39.870 align:middle line:84% and so I didn't find out about his death until a few months 00:00:39.870 --> 00:00:41.700 align:middle line:90% after he died. 00:00:41.700 --> 00:00:44.830 align:middle line:84% He was very much a survivor of HIV. 00:00:44.830 --> 00:00:49.920 align:middle line:84% He was an important activist in the fight against HIV and AIDS, 00:00:49.920 --> 00:00:51.840 align:middle line:90% in this city and elsewhere. 00:00:51.840 --> 00:00:57.030 align:middle line:84% And he died from an unrelated, precipitous lung 00:00:57.030 --> 00:01:01.620 align:middle line:84% infection, double pneumonia, in the hospital in February. 00:01:01.620 --> 00:01:06.630 align:middle line:84% I'm very lucky that the last memory I have of him, 00:01:06.630 --> 00:01:09.150 align:middle line:84% I think almost the last thing he said to me publicly, 00:01:09.150 --> 00:01:12.270 align:middle line:84% was-- he was with a group of friends. 00:01:12.270 --> 00:01:16.350 align:middle line:84% He was very much the kind of the star prince of one 00:01:16.350 --> 00:01:18.700 align:middle line:90% of Tucson's underworlds. 00:01:18.700 --> 00:01:20.700 align:middle line:84% And I didn't have a lot of access to that world. 00:01:20.700 --> 00:01:24.300 align:middle line:90% But he was with some friends. 00:01:24.300 --> 00:01:27.450 align:middle line:84% He hushed everyone when I approached the table. 00:01:27.450 --> 00:01:30.570 align:middle line:84% And he said, this is the guy who made me want to keep living. 00:01:30.570 --> 00:01:37.170 align:middle line:84% So I met Jeremy days after his diagnosis, in 2006 and 2007. 00:01:37.170 --> 00:01:41.310 align:middle line:84% And I want to say to him that the feeling is mutual. 00:01:41.310 --> 00:01:45.960 align:middle line:84% And in his memory and with hopes for comfort 00:01:45.960 --> 00:01:50.070 align:middle line:84% for his husband, Ben, and his mother, 00:01:50.070 --> 00:01:53.393 align:middle line:84% who was very devoted to him, Sheila, I want to read-- 00:01:53.393 --> 00:01:54.810 align:middle line:84% not a poem, because I don't really 00:01:54.810 --> 00:01:56.383 align:middle line:84% have a poem that I wrote for Jeremy. 00:01:56.383 --> 00:01:58.800 align:middle line:84% And so my partner, John, said, why don't you just dedicate 00:01:58.800 --> 00:01:59.670 align:middle line:90% the reading to him? 00:01:59.670 --> 00:02:00.878 align:middle line:90% And so that's what I'm doing. 00:02:00.878 --> 00:02:02.820 align:middle line:84% And I selected some poems that have 00:02:02.820 --> 00:02:06.090 align:middle line:84% sympathies with who I knew Jeremy to be, 00:02:06.090 --> 00:02:08.100 align:middle line:90% including that first poem. 00:02:08.100 --> 00:02:13.452 align:middle line:84% This is then called "Lifespan Addenda." 00:02:13.452 --> 00:02:15.660 align:middle line:84% It's the first poem in the last section of this book. 00:02:15.660 --> 00:02:18.540 align:middle line:90% 00:02:18.540 --> 00:02:19.530 align:middle line:90% It's not in parts. 00:02:19.530 --> 00:02:21.780 align:middle line:84% But now that I've written the book and it's out there, 00:02:21.780 --> 00:02:25.230 align:middle line:90% I kind of wish that it was. 00:02:25.230 --> 00:02:27.270 align:middle line:84% There's a sort of little prefatory moment, 00:02:27.270 --> 00:02:32.430 align:middle line:84% and then there's three sections belonging to three birds. 00:02:32.430 --> 00:02:38.010 align:middle line:84% So I won't say them, but it could be in sections "Grackle," 00:02:38.010 --> 00:02:40.018 align:middle line:90% "Buzzard," and "Pheasant." 00:02:40.018 --> 00:02:41.310 align:middle line:90% So you might have that in mind. 00:02:41.310 --> 00:02:44.020 align:middle line:90% 00:02:44.020 --> 00:02:47.600 align:middle line:90% "Lifespan Addenda" 00:02:47.600 --> 00:02:52.250 align:middle line:84% "Auspex in hospice, each of us, home forsworn, 00:02:52.250 --> 00:02:55.130 align:middle line:90% should hope to be visited again. 00:02:55.130 --> 00:02:59.930 align:middle line:84% Three birds come back, crisis apparition or provident 00:02:59.930 --> 00:03:04.310 align:middle line:84% delivery, searching the air in a reverie you might announce. 00:03:04.310 --> 00:03:08.600 align:middle line:84% And they'd grant you that, or I, present for astonishment 00:03:08.600 --> 00:03:12.860 align:middle line:84% purposes in moments everything reset. 00:03:12.860 --> 00:03:17.900 align:middle line:84% The way Guy Davenport said a bird'd be, an attachment, 00:03:17.900 --> 00:03:21.710 align:middle line:84% mailer-daemon, returning for review ones 00:03:21.710 --> 00:03:24.800 align:middle line:84% that rook, a parliament gathering singly. 00:03:24.800 --> 00:03:27.470 align:middle line:90% 00:03:27.470 --> 00:03:31.400 align:middle line:84% The grackle above the backlot xeriscape two feet 00:03:31.400 --> 00:03:33.350 align:middle line:90% levitated for his mate. 00:03:33.350 --> 00:03:37.520 align:middle line:84% Pima County, el milagro, Arizona. 00:03:37.520 --> 00:03:43.130 align:middle line:84% A casino gush of nonpareil, openly winning a minute long. 00:03:43.130 --> 00:03:47.360 align:middle line:84% All that ultra black to undo his lover did. 00:03:47.360 --> 00:03:49.490 align:middle line:90% Nature spent a fortune. 00:03:49.490 --> 00:03:53.180 align:middle line:84% One day into night I got it right. 00:03:53.180 --> 00:03:56.390 align:middle line:90% The colors trail, trail away. 00:03:56.390 --> 00:04:00.800 align:middle line:84% The Christ Event obviating adverbs, as it were. 00:04:00.800 --> 00:04:03.950 align:middle line:90% Not even once, not finally. 00:04:03.950 --> 00:04:07.070 align:middle line:84% Back when I had everything to want. 00:04:07.070 --> 00:04:11.210 align:middle line:84% The bird jumping into the hold in the air, attached 00:04:11.210 --> 00:04:15.620 align:middle line:90% to whatever time is attached to. 00:04:15.620 --> 00:04:18.110 align:middle line:84% Where for a stretch coming off the bridge 00:04:18.110 --> 00:04:20.570 align:middle line:84% to the barrier island the causeway 00:04:20.570 --> 00:04:23.150 align:middle line:90% veins the isthmus entirely. 00:04:23.150 --> 00:04:25.610 align:middle line:84% The stone crabs cross the street, 00:04:25.610 --> 00:04:29.870 align:middle line:84% and gravid must, for less brackish hatch. 00:04:29.870 --> 00:04:32.960 align:middle line:84% And a turkey buzzard gets the picture. 00:04:32.960 --> 00:04:38.720 align:middle line:84% Never been eyed, not that way, since, seed sown in. 00:04:38.720 --> 00:04:41.570 align:middle line:84% The midpoint of my life now you see. 00:04:41.570 --> 00:04:45.260 align:middle line:84% Interruptions across and the causeway too. 00:04:45.260 --> 00:04:47.870 align:middle line:90% Here I am breaking the horizon. 00:04:47.870 --> 00:04:50.600 align:middle line:84% Something unwinding still in the car, 00:04:50.600 --> 00:04:56.930 align:middle line:84% slowing another half mile before the turnout came, an antidote 00:04:56.930 --> 00:04:58.610 align:middle line:90% and doubleback. 00:04:58.610 --> 00:05:03.560 align:middle line:84% Causeway transposition-- from yanking the wet sweet back body 00:05:03.560 --> 00:05:06.080 align:middle line:84% out of the cracked case, a pause, 00:05:06.080 --> 00:05:09.275 align:middle line:84% her fearsome red rule to return through. 00:05:09.275 --> 00:05:12.070 align:middle line:90% 00:05:12.070 --> 00:05:16.720 align:middle line:84% In the suffusion of a rich old woods' last new growth, 00:05:16.720 --> 00:05:21.100 align:middle line:84% Election Day ferns capitalize on shred light, 00:05:21.100 --> 00:05:25.300 align:middle line:84% an Idaho of understory greener than spring. 00:05:25.300 --> 00:05:29.890 align:middle line:84% Like this, the footfalls far from home, his and mine and his 00:05:29.890 --> 00:05:30.820 align:middle line:90% and mine. 00:05:30.820 --> 00:05:35.260 align:middle line:84% And now, again, the dotty canopy and the sink sensation focus 00:05:35.260 --> 00:05:37.120 align:middle line:90% upward sends. 00:05:37.120 --> 00:05:41.470 align:middle line:84% When did the world start so the ghost berry bush, by dark, 00:05:41.470 --> 00:05:45.940 align:middle line:84% is a grown-down constellation and the newt in his hand 00:05:45.940 --> 00:05:47.740 align:middle line:90% wasabi? 00:05:47.740 --> 00:05:50.230 align:middle line:84% The void, chasing the ample rush, 00:05:50.230 --> 00:05:54.520 align:middle line:84% heart-level, like a drawer receding into the mountainside. 00:05:54.520 --> 00:05:59.040 align:middle line:84% Heavily the pheasant pushes her flight deeper in." 00:05:59.040 --> 00:06:00.000 align:middle line:90%