WEBVTT

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I'm going to read a poem
here that is in my experience

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a kind of litmus test for
where you've come from.

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It's like the New York Times
dialect quiz but for poetry.

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And I'm going to give you a
quiz at the end of this poem

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to ask you whether you think
that it ends on a good note

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or on a bad note, OK?

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This is called
"Familial," and it

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is the first autobiographical
poem I ever wrote.

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Familial, automatic, plan
lists, my father startled

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from his roadside
piss, kicks gun

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to shoulder cranks shell to
chamber knocks the buck down.

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His jeans bag at his ankle.

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My orange plastic vest
crackles in the wind.

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I am 10.

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We are 10 miles out from
camp, dirt bike half

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slung off the mud-rutted road.

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While at our feet, the
unintended four-point sinks

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into the readily
melting snow, masterly

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our butchery, quick
jugulation, bloodless

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sliced down the center line
as I hold the hind legs

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wide, the tugs that empty
throat and heart, guts

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and sex onto the
ground for coyotes,

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like lords, I think, our
progress back to camp.

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The carcass upright on
the motorcycle seat.

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Hooves roped to pedal
and handlebar, head

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half-severed, lolling antlers
back onto my father's shoulder,

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while I snuggle into its
vertical gash throttled down

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the mountain.

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I am red-handed, wind
raw, and triumphal.

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I am my father's son.

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OK, who says it's a happy poem?

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And who says it's
not a happy poem?

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The people who think it's not
happy, are you from a coast?

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[LAUGHTER]

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That is what I have found.

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I gave the-- I read this poem
a few years ago in New York,

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and a woman came
up to me afterward,

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and she said, "I'm so sorry
about the abuse you suffered

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as a child."

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And I said, "What are
you talking about?"

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And she said your father
and the deer, I'm like,

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"That was the best
thing of my life,

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what are you talking about?"

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