WEBVTT

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This-- some un-collected
poems, a couple new.

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I do feel like
you are my family.

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And I thank Natalie for that
beautiful, beautiful definition

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of what family is, because
that's really what it is.

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Then there's that other family,
the one you're born with,

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and the one that you
go through life with.

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And in my part of the
woods, which is Akron,

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Ohio, and everyone came up
from the South kind of en masse

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in the '20s.

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So every time we meet-- and we
usually meet for what I call

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the picnic holidays, which are
4th of July and Memorial Day--

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whenever we met,
everybody suddenly--

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well, we're no
longer Midwesterners,

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let's put it that way.

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[LAUGHTER]

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"Family Reunion".

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"30 seconds into the
barbecue, my Cleveland cousins

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have everyone speaking Southern,
broadened vowels and dropped

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consonants, whoops and caws.

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It's more osmosis than magic,
a sliding thrall back to a time

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when working the tire factories
meant entire neighborhoods

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coming up from
Georgia or Tennessee,

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accents helplessly intact, while
their children, inflections

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flattened to match the field
they thought they were playing

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on, knew without asking when it
was safe to roll out a drawl,

00:01:38.260 --> 00:01:42.490 align:middle line:84%
just as it's understood
'potluck' means resurrecting

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the food we've abandoned along
the way for the sake of sleeker

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thighs.

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I look over the
yard to the porch

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with its battalion of
aunts, the wavering

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ranks of uncles at the grill.

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Everywhere else, hordes
of progeny are swirling,

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and my cousins are yakking
on as if they were waist-deep

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in quicksand but, like
the books recommend,

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aren't moving until
someone hauls them free.

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Who are all these children?

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Who had them, and with whom?

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Through the general
coffee tones,

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the shamed genetics cut a creamy
swath, Cherokee's burnt umber

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transposed onto generous
lips, a glance flaring gray

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above the crushed nose we
label Anonymous African.

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It's all here, the beautiful
geometry of Mendel's peas

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and their grim logic.

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And though we remain clearly
divided on the merits of okra,

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there's still time to
demolish the cheese grits

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and tear into slow-cooked
ribs so tender,

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we agree they're worth the extra
pound or two our menfolk swear

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will always bring them home.

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Pity the poor soul who lives
a life without butter--

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[LAUGHTER]

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--those pinched knees and tennis
shoulders and hatchety smiles."

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[LAUGHTER]