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And I want to thank
Frances, who is not here,

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and Gail, who thought
of me for this series.

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I haven't read in Tucson
in a number of years.

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But I think the time is right.

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The last few years
I've had the honor

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of working with an
unbelievable number of talented

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and great hearted and smart
students, and a number of you

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are here.

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And you have made my
teaching life a joy,

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and so this reading is for you.

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And I want to thank you
for all that you've done.

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In fact, I'm going to
start out by reading

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a few poems, prose
poems, published

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by some of those students.

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The nice thing about
working with great students

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is they turn around
and publish your work.

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And I like that.

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CUE is a new prose poem magazine.

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This is the inaugural issue.

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It is edited by Morgan Schultd
and Mark Horosky, recent MFA

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poetry graduates, with a
lot of help from Stephanie

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Balzer, a current MFA poet,
and an undergraduate poet,

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who finished off a year
ago, Miriam Benadi.

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And there are people
in here from James Tate

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to Barbara Cully to David
Young to David Lehman, Alison

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Deming, Aloysius
Bertrand, who began

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the form, French middle 19th
century poets and translations

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of this.

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It's for sale.

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Buy the copies up
here when I'm done.

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I'm going to read one poem
titled "The Healing Arts".

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It's a two-part, two
paragraph poem, a meditation

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on my dog sleeping.

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"The Healing Arts".

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"When the dog's
sleep is untroubled,

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I put milk on the stove to
boil for a good cup of coffee.

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I turned my back on it.

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In the sewing basket my
grandmother willed to me

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I find just the right
buttons for eyes

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to sew on my niece's rag
doll, the one I promised

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to repair months ago
then left hanging

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on a hook in the closet
like an accusation,

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but as it turns
out, a tender one

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because I grew accustomed
to asking the doll's opinion

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when I dressed in the morning
and tried after several weeks

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to make her laugh when
fresh from the shower

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a pathetic stick of a
man, I puffed out my belly

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like a pregnant woman.

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Such a labor though.

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Such a promise left unfulfilled,
that should my niece

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grow to adolescence without
the doll I said I'd mend,

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who'd become a
haunting, whose source

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I could never put my finger on.

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But when the dog's
sleep is troubled,

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her paws scramble on
the painted pine floor.

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She's digging for a mole or
chasing pigeons inside her head

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when she dreams.

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So I sit by her for a while.

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I take out a book I
bought at a yard sale

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on impulse, stories, old ones
from a time when villages were

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common and all who lived in
them knew each other's business,

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putting up with this or that
if no one involved complained,

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agreeing without
a word to poison

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the murderer bit
by bit at the Inn

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where he drank evenings since
his uncle, the Constable,

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would take no action.

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Stories from a time when
idiots wandered into whatever

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houses they wished,
sleeping where they fell,

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and placing their
filthy fingers into

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bowls of soup with the
impunity of the innocent.

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It seems unfair to invoke God.

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You can't really believe
in a know-it-all presence

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who was in charge.

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Yet in such stories,
simple and dark,

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in which the character's
obsessions and perversity

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are like those we tuned
to daytime TV talk

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shows to hear today.

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Such behavior was folded
into everyday like currents

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into dough one plans
to bake into scones.

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Reading them beside an
animal in silent turmoil,

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an animal in love.

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Who can help but feel
the kindly embrace

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with the terrible revealing of
force beyond human reckoning?"

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