WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.480 align:middle line:90% 00:00:03.480 --> 00:00:10.230 align:middle line:84% The title poem for this book I will read next. 00:00:10.230 --> 00:00:12.090 align:middle line:90% "The Ripped-Out Seam." 00:00:12.090 --> 00:00:14.040 align:middle line:84% I don't know if I need to explain. 00:00:14.040 --> 00:00:20.490 align:middle line:84% Acoma Pueblo is considered to be the oldest inhabited city 00:00:20.490 --> 00:00:22.110 align:middle line:90% in North America. 00:00:22.110 --> 00:00:24.390 align:middle line:84% It's the home of the Acoma people, 00:00:24.390 --> 00:00:27.120 align:middle line:84% though there are only about six people who actually live up 00:00:27.120 --> 00:00:28.470 align:middle line:90% there now. 00:00:28.470 --> 00:00:30.960 align:middle line:84% And it's a city-- a pueblo city built 00:00:30.960 --> 00:00:33.420 align:middle line:84% on top of a very high mesa, not too 00:00:33.420 --> 00:00:36.780 align:middle line:90% far from Grants, New Mexico. 00:00:36.780 --> 00:00:39.400 align:middle line:90% 00:00:39.400 --> 00:00:42.420 align:middle line:84% And there's a reference here to that Pueblo, 00:00:42.420 --> 00:00:47.070 align:middle line:84% and their particular style of pottery which is always painted 00:00:47.070 --> 00:00:50.610 align:middle line:90% black on a white surface. 00:00:50.610 --> 00:00:53.130 align:middle line:90% "The Ripped-Out Seam." 00:00:53.130 --> 00:00:55.920 align:middle line:84% "I will never stitch back together the horned toad 00:00:55.920 --> 00:00:58.320 align:middle line:90% that I halved with a shovel. 00:00:58.320 --> 00:01:02.370 align:middle line:84% All summer, in my mind, holding itself upright, 00:01:02.370 --> 00:01:06.840 align:middle line:84% trying to balance its torso between its front legs, 00:01:06.840 --> 00:01:11.070 align:middle line:84% the toad has tried to drag itself forward, 00:01:11.070 --> 00:01:15.990 align:middle line:84% to escape the agonized coils of its own entrails spilling 00:01:15.990 --> 00:01:19.830 align:middle line:84% out of the gaping absence of its lower body. 00:01:19.830 --> 00:01:25.170 align:middle line:84% No meaning I can think of, no matter how deft of hand, 00:01:25.170 --> 00:01:28.260 align:middle line:84% can knit the pale distended bowels, 00:01:28.260 --> 00:01:32.430 align:middle line:84% or reconnect the webbed feet's chaotic twitching 00:01:32.430 --> 00:01:38.190 align:middle line:84% to the brain that lunged, leapt, propelled them forward. 00:01:38.190 --> 00:01:40.590 align:middle line:84% I was excavating a pit for the children 00:01:40.590 --> 00:01:44.370 align:middle line:84% to play in with their fleets of miniature cars, 00:01:44.370 --> 00:01:49.950 align:middle line:84% and must have scooped the legs from the body in one motion. 00:01:49.950 --> 00:01:54.090 align:middle line:84% When I lifted the shovel and saw the flayed skin resting 00:01:54.090 --> 00:01:58.590 align:middle line:84% in the blade, I thought the thighs cavities bloodless 00:01:58.590 --> 00:02:02.940 align:middle line:84% and filled with dirt were the ancient remains of a cat's 00:02:02.940 --> 00:02:07.380 align:middle line:84% nightly predation, or the relic of a hibernation 00:02:07.380 --> 00:02:10.860 align:middle line:84% from which the horned toad never awoke. 00:02:10.860 --> 00:02:14.190 align:middle line:90% But then I saw the upper half-- 00:02:14.190 --> 00:02:18.030 align:middle line:84% alive, sitting at the edge of the heaped earth 00:02:18.030 --> 00:02:21.810 align:middle line:84% where it, too, it had been tossed. 00:02:21.810 --> 00:02:26.220 align:middle line:84% What shocked me was how perfect the unwounded half of the body 00:02:26.220 --> 00:02:27.300 align:middle line:90% was-- 00:02:27.300 --> 00:02:31.650 align:middle line:84% the eye stunned gold, the jaws tiny teeth, 00:02:31.650 --> 00:02:36.510 align:middle line:84% the spines prickled barbs, the crimson gills breathing color, 00:02:36.510 --> 00:02:40.410 align:middle line:84% the throats throbbing rhythm, the head and four legs 00:02:40.410 --> 00:02:43.980 align:middle line:90% trying to go on, to continue-- 00:02:43.980 --> 00:02:46.800 align:middle line:84% while the lower half had been interrupted, 00:02:46.800 --> 00:02:51.960 align:middle line:84% in the emptying out of the blue and yellow guts, the soft pulp 00:02:51.960 --> 00:02:55.050 align:middle line:90% of its liver and lungs. 00:02:55.050 --> 00:02:58.830 align:middle line:84% That was June, now it's the end of August. 00:02:58.830 --> 00:03:03.390 align:middle line:84% And in my mind, I'm still carrying the still living torso 00:03:03.390 --> 00:03:07.020 align:middle line:84% behind a tree, where I hit it with a shovel, 00:03:07.020 --> 00:03:11.100 align:middle line:84% fracture the skull, so it will no longer suffer 00:03:11.100 --> 00:03:13.530 align:middle line:90% what I have done to it. 00:03:13.530 --> 00:03:18.450 align:middle line:84% Again and again, the creature drags itself forward, 00:03:18.450 --> 00:03:22.980 align:middle line:84% tries to reunite the two halves of what it is, 00:03:22.980 --> 00:03:28.200 align:middle line:84% to heal the wound it keeps dragging behind. 00:03:28.200 --> 00:03:31.860 align:middle line:84% Only in the ripped-out seams of body, of mind, 00:03:31.860 --> 00:03:34.890 align:middle line:90% do we resemble each other-- 00:03:34.890 --> 00:03:40.110 align:middle line:84% rendered together, the horned lizard and the human figure 00:03:40.110 --> 00:03:44.145 align:middle line:84% drawn in black on the white surface of every vessel 00:03:44.145 --> 00:03:49.140 align:middle line:84% that the Acoma people paint and sell to tourists. 00:03:49.140 --> 00:03:53.610 align:middle line:84% They shrug if anyone asks what the meaning is 00:03:53.610 --> 00:03:58.200 align:middle line:84% of this design, of that one, at the idea 00:03:58.200 --> 00:04:03.140 align:middle line:84% that everything must mean something other than it is. 00:04:03.140 --> 00:04:05.000 align:middle line:90%