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So my friend John, he told
me that because of the size

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of my book, I have earned
a space between Robert

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Lowell and Lyn Hejinian on his
bookshelf, which I'll take.

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That's very fair.

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And when I was telling
him why my book is

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slightly larger than usual,
it's because of this one poem.

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I've never read it before.

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I also realize standing
right here right

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now that this was in
my very first workshop

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packet in September 2012.

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So full circle, guys.

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"The Part About Fate or
Counterpoint, Bolaño, Roberto.

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2666-- the part about fate."

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"I want to begin this
poem with two stories.

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One.

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In 1984, my mother
was pulled over

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for speeding in a rural, still
unnamed village in Taishan.

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The cop was a
40-year-old man who

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let her go because of
her age and gender.

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Growing up, my
mother would tell me

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to use my age and gender to
get out of this kind of story.

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She said to hold my body
down like a political piece.

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Men were those pieces who
would enter my bed at night.

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Spahr, Juliana.

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"This connection of
everyone with lungs".

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At night, unable to turn
over or away from this,

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the three legged stool
of political piece,

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military piece, and
development piece

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that has entered into
our beds at night.

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Two.

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In 2012, I was pulled over
for speeding in the Los Altos

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hills.

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I thought about using my
expired disability placard

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to justify speeding.

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I didn't have to
justify anything.

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All I did was roll down
the window and smile

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and the 40 something
cop let me go.

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Most of the rest of this
poem happened in 1993.

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The details.

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She's beautiful and
formidable, real and winning,

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starred all over.

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There's a fight now
and then for her time.

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From then on, her killings
began to be counted.

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Spahr.

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Gadhafi.

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19,000 gallons of crude oil
in the frozen Nemadji river.

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All of this exists.

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That evening, those next stars.

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Nobody refused to identify her.

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There were enactments that I
thought of as feminist acts,

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gender as performance.

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To be a secondary
loved one, I had

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to make and unmake my sex
and location all day long.

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Wherever to go to get away
from crude frozen oil.

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Gadhafi.

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All of this goes on.

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There were no other
deaths of other women.

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The dance opens and
the dead woman is 22.

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I'm 22 when a door takes
off part of my hand.

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Gender is a
construction, something

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I had to remake when my hands
were no longer formidable.

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Beloved, all our
days come together

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in order to tie up all fear,
the last violent death.

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I want to tie up all mistakes
and proceed to shoot them.

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I want to tie up the
first dead woman of 1993

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and put her with the
hands that settled her.

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Spahr.

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Beloveds, all our
theories and generations

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came together today in order to
find the optimum way of lacing

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shoes.

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I want to tie everything
up when I speak of yous.

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I want to tie it all up and
tie up the world in an attempt

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to understand the
swirls of patterns,

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but there is no efficient way.

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I want my news to not reiterate
hers and the scarred moon

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to shine in the sky, though
there is no separation

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of harmony over time.

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The next killing was rhythm
and contour, the shape

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of a music rising and falling.

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One day, contour's father
left and never returned.

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Rhythm starts speaking in a
different incomprehensible

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language, hoping to
move contour's mouth.

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Contour's clavicle
wouldn't call it music.

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Rhythm put a muzzle
on her mouth.

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Calling it music, silence
was living in contemplation

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of lovely perverse sex at all.

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If they died, they would
repel that system of them

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tied in place.

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Their mouths shut for the walls.

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Bolaño.

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if you're afraid
of your own fears,

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you're forced to live in
constant contemplation of them.

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And if they
materialize, what you

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have is a system
that feeds on itself.

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A vicious cycle.

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Anxious run at all.

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I speak of how the
dead woman isn't me.

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My body isn't a game.

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I'm not powerless to unmake
and remake my person.

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Spahr.

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I speak of how
the world suddenly

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seems as if it is a
game of some sort.

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A game where troops are massed
on a flat map of the world.

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And if one looks at the
game board long enough,

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one can see the
patterns even as one

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is powerless to prevent them.

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I happened in 1993.

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The game wasn't round enough.

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The part about fate.

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It's hard to write
a beautiful song.

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15 days later,
they'd see each other

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and the would be
dead woman would

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sound more beautiful than
internal structures sung

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simultaneously.

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The formidable voices
had always been the same.

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The beloved all
the more repeated.

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The political, military,
and developmental pieces

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reinforcing and never changing,
the fate the same one.

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Bolaño.

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15 days later, they would
see each other again

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and everything would be just
as it had been the time before.

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The dim light was
always the same.

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The shower always repeated.

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The sunsets and the
mountains never changed.

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The stars were the same stars."

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