So my friend John, he told me that because of the size
of my book, I have earned a space between Robert
Lowell and Lyn Hejinian on his bookshelf, which I'll take.
That's very fair.
And when I was telling him why my book is
slightly larger than usual, it's because of this one poem.
I've never read it before.
I also realize standing right here right
now that this was in my very first workshop
packet in September 2012.
So full circle, guys.
"The Part About Fate or Counterpoint, Bolaño, Roberto.
2666-- the part about fate."
"I want to begin this poem with two stories.
One.
In 1984, my mother was pulled over
for speeding in a rural, still unnamed village in Taishan.
The cop was a 40-year-old man who
let her go because of her age and gender.
Growing up, my mother would tell me
to use my age and gender to get out of this kind of story.
She said to hold my body down like a political piece.
Men were those pieces who would enter my bed at night.
Spahr, Juliana.
"This connection of everyone with lungs".
At night, unable to turn over or away from this,
the three legged stool of political piece,
military piece, and development piece
that has entered into our beds at night.
Two.
In 2012, I was pulled over for speeding in the Los Altos
hills.
I thought about using my expired disability placard
to justify speeding.
I didn't have to justify anything.
All I did was roll down the window and smile
and the 40 something cop let me go.
Most of the rest of this poem happened in 1993.
The details.
She's beautiful and formidable, real and winning,
starred all over.
There's a fight now and then for her time.
From then on, her killings began to be counted.
Spahr.
Gadhafi.
19,000 gallons of crude oil in the frozen Nemadji river.
All of this exists.
That evening, those next stars.
Nobody refused to identify her.
There were enactments that I thought of as feminist acts,
gender as performance.
To be a secondary loved one, I had
to make and unmake my sex and location all day long.
Wherever to go to get away from crude frozen oil.
Gadhafi.
All of this goes on.
There were no other deaths of other women.
The dance opens and the dead woman is 22.
I'm 22 when a door takes off part of my hand.
Gender is a construction, something
I had to remake when my hands were no longer formidable.
Beloved, all our days come together
in order to tie up all fear, the last violent death.
I want to tie up all mistakes and proceed to shoot them.
I want to tie up the first dead woman of 1993
and put her with the hands that settled her.
Spahr.
Beloveds, all our theories and generations
came together today in order to find the optimum way of lacing
shoes.
I want to tie everything up when I speak of yous.
I want to tie it all up and tie up the world in an attempt
to understand the swirls of patterns,
but there is no efficient way.
I want my news to not reiterate hers and the scarred moon
to shine in the sky, though there is no separation
of harmony over time.
The next killing was rhythm and contour, the shape
of a music rising and falling.
One day, contour's father left and never returned.
Rhythm starts speaking in a different incomprehensible
language, hoping to move contour's mouth.
Contour's clavicle wouldn't call it music.
Rhythm put a muzzle on her mouth.
Calling it music, silence was living in contemplation
of lovely perverse sex at all.
If they died, they would repel that system of them
tied in place.
Their mouths shut for the walls.
Bolaño.
if you're afraid of your own fears,
you're forced to live in constant contemplation of them.
And if they materialize, what you
have is a system that feeds on itself.
A vicious cycle.
Anxious run at all.
I speak of how the dead woman isn't me.
My body isn't a game.
I'm not powerless to unmake and remake my person.
Spahr.
I speak of how the world suddenly
seems as if it is a game of some sort.
A game where troops are massed on a flat map of the world.
And if one looks at the game board long enough,
one can see the patterns even as one
is powerless to prevent them.
I happened in 1993.
The game wasn't round enough.
The part about fate.
It's hard to write a beautiful song.
15 days later, they'd see each other
and the would be dead woman would
sound more beautiful than internal structures sung
simultaneously.
The formidable voices had always been the same.
The beloved all the more repeated.
The political, military, and developmental pieces
reinforcing and never changing, the fate the same one.
Bolaño.
15 days later, they would see each other again
and everything would be just as it had been the time before.
The dim light was always the same.
The shower always repeated.
The sunsets and the mountains never changed.
The stars were the same stars."