WEBVTT

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I hope there's
nothing in my teeth.

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Thank you, Jason.

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And it's funny.

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Although I just met
Jason, we're kind of

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on the same page with this.

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I just gave a
reading in Anchorage.

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And I was wholly unprepared
because I spent the whole night

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cleaning my house
and baking cookies.

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And this time I resolved I
was going to be prepared.

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And I came up with a game plan.

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First I'm going to
spend 30 seconds messing

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with the microphone and
then keep going, then

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have Frances do it.

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OK.

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Is that all right?

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Yeah.

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OK.

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So my game plan is-- since
this was kind of being invited

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for the first book and then
the second book just happened

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to come out like right when
I was leaving my house--

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that I would do a little
exercise-y plan of reading

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poems from each book next to
each other on the same topic.

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So of course the
topics I chose and that

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were present in both books
are birth, love, and death

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because that's what
it's all about.

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I mean, it's not going to
really be birth, love, and death

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because the birth
will be birthdays.

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And the love will be
infidelity of course.

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And the death is spring
because you know why.

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Spring leads to death.

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OK.

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So let's keep going
with the exercise.

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Let's see if it works.

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I love being prepared.

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OK, one.

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This is the birthday poem.

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And I it's funny
because I am a Virgo,

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and I just had my 40th birthday.

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And so this poem
from my first book

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is called "30 Years Rising."

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"I needed to point
to the buildings

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as if they all stood for
something, as if Detroit could

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rise again into its own
skyline filled in as it always

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is inside me, each
cracked sidewalk,

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each of the uniformed girls
braided and quiet as weeds,

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each bicycled boy, each man
with a car and a wife, the ones

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I slept with and arranged neatly
like a newly laid subdivision.

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But I was driving
with my brother who

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doesn't like to think
of the 30 years rising

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inside us, the leavened truth.

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He's arrived at the heavy
black X of destination

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on the inside of his forehead.

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And he doesn't want to see me
looking like this, open palmed

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and childishly dressed with
hip bones instead of children,

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aching to put my sneakered
feet on his new leather dash.

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He doesn't want to hear me
say something fucked-up,

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something like,
it's in my bones.

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My sternum runs like
Woodward Avenue.

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It's pinnated, parked on, full
of dirt, holding women and wigs

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and cigarettes, bars
lit from the outside.

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It's overflowing with
pool tables and ashtrays.

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My ribs are holding up factories
and breweries, two bedroom

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houses and mutli-storied
lives, this strip, this city,

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these side streets,
a bony feather.

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He's lived here all his life.

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But I gave up these
streets for so many others.

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I have turnstiles to ride the
metro, memorized El tracks

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and Muni stations until
I had a huge worn subway

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map on the inside of my head but
couldn't get off at any stop,

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couldn't begin to
live in any city,

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and couldn't sleep with
anybody but myself.

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I gave up this body
for so many others.

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I've been both an
exaggeration of myself

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and someone who looks just
like me but sounds different.

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But now I'm back to visit both.

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And I need to point to
my first hotel room,

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to the mortuary above which
my tall half Chinese, half

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German punk rock boyfriend
fingered me in his bed--

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like a book in his little bed."

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Yeah, I got a little
excited, sorry.

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And to the hospital
where our bone mother

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died so late or so early that
we were both sound asleep--

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I didn't say it, but my
sternum is breaking with this.

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It's sinking like
Woodward as Detroit rises

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around my brother's turn,
rises and falls, falls not

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at all like this
light summer rain

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but hard like somebody else's
memory, insistent, unwanted,

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but suddenly and
again being claimed."

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So that was "30."

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