I'm going to bob and weave between a new manuscript
of poems and some prose from a new book, which
will be out in May.
And then new poems from my new book,
which is I just got copies a couple of days ago,
and well, I like the book I don't, know.
[LAUGHTER]
The first poem is called "The Wrestler's Heart."
When I was 16, 17, 18 years old I used to wrestle.
And this is sort of a summary of my years wrestling.
"I had no choice but to shave my hair and wrestle.
The 30 guys humping one another on a mat.
I didn't like high school.
There were no classes in archaeology
and the girls are too much like flowers to bother with them.
My brother I think was a hippie and my sister I know
was a runner up queen of the Latin American club.
I saw her in the--
when I saw her in the cafeteria waved and said things
like Debbie, is it your turn to do dishes tonight,
she would smile and make her eyes real scary at me.
My brother I believe was taking reds and batting dust motes.
The wrestling coach was the same person who
taught you how to drive a car.
But first, there was wrestling the young guys
in the steamy room.
And coach with the silver whistle, his clipboard,
his pencil behind his clubbed ear.
I was no good at wrestling.
Everyone was better than me.
Everyone was larger in the showers,
their cocks like heavy wrenches, their hair like the scribbling
of a mad child.
I would lather as best I could to hide what I didn't have
and then walk home in the dark.
[LAUGHTER]
When we wrestled Madera High School
I was pinned in 12 seconds.
My mom threw me a half a stick of gum from the bleachers.
She shouted it's Juicy Fruit and I just looked at her.
[LAUGHTER]
I looked at the three spectators all crunching corn
nuts their faces like punched-in paper bags.
We lost that night.
The next day in biology I chewed my half stick of Juicy Fruit
and thought what can go wrong in 12 seconds.
[LAUGHTER]
The guy who pinned me was named Bloodworth.
There was a meaning in that name.
And that night I asked my mom what our name meant in Spanish.
She stirred the crackling papas and said it meant Mexican.
I asked her what was the worst thing that happened to her
in the shortest period of time.
[LAUGHTER]
She looked at my stepfather's chair
and told me to take out the garbage.
[LAUGHTER]
That year I gained weight, lost weight, and lost more
matches nearly all by pins.
I wore my arm in a sling when I got blood poisoning
from a dirty fingernail.
I liked that.
I liked being hurt.
I even went as far as limping which
I thought would attract girls.
[LAUGHTER]
When the counselor called me to his office
and asked what I want to do with my life,
I told him I wanted to be an archaeologist.
And if not that, then an oceanographer.
I told him I had these feelings I was Chinese,
that I'd lived before and was going to live again.
He told me to get a drink of water and by a third period
I should reconsider what I was saying.
[LAUGHTER]
I studied some, dated once, ate the same spam sandwich until it
was spring and most of trees had circled the campus
and wrestling was over.
Then school was over.
That summer I mowed lawns, picked grapes,
and rode my bike up and down the block because it
was good for heart and leg.
The next year I took Driver's Ed.
Coach was a teacher.
He said, don't be scared but you're
going to see some punks getting killed.
If you're going to cry, do it later.
He then turned on the projector, a funnel of silver light
that showed motes of dust then six seconds of car wreck
from different angles.
The narrator with the wrestler's haircut came on.
His face was thick like a canned ham sliding onto a platter.
He held a black tennis shoe and said the boy
who wore this sneaker is dead.
Two girls cried, three boys laughed.
Coach smiled and slapped the clipboard
against his leg kind of hard.
With one year of wrestling behind me,
I barely peeked but thought six seconds
for the kid with the sneakers, 12 seconds for Bloodworth
to throw me on my back, tough luck in half the time."
[LAUGHTER]