I wanted to take just a second and thank everybody
for being here tonight.
And it makes me so happy to think
about how many poetry readings there
are, or just readings in general happening all
over the world at this moment.
Which means that people are sort of, like,
have put their cell phones away and their Facebook
and their laptops away and are really listening to something.
And I feel like, when I was listening
to you read, Francine, it sort of just like,
that kind of listening really makes me
feel so alive and so present.
So thank you so much for doing that here with us tonight.
And I wanted to thank everybody here at the Poetry Center.
Tyler and Hannah and Julie and Cybele and--
I feel like I just pronounced your name wrong.
OK.
Cybele.
Yes.
And the students who we spoke with today,
and it's just been-- it's been such a good day,
and the storm was amazing.
And I just think, like, as Tyler was saying,
it's 53 years the Poetry Center's been here.
That's crazy, because that's 53 years that people
cared enough to keep poetry not just alive,
but create a space for it.
That's just un-fucking-believable.
Bless y'all.
Thank you.
OK just a couple more poems.
"Parable of the Prodigal Prajapati."
"There are women in the land of your birth
who tucked machetes into baskets fat with marigolds.
For years you've been trying to grow them here,
but baba, the soil of this country
forgets the smell of sky burnished with shrapnel.
I noticed you rake your heart out
of the soil to rebury your father and daughter.
I noticed how much you miss them,
so I tried hard to learn the language of your flowers.
I noticed you liked it when I stood beside you while you
coaxed out each marigold's hundreds of glowing florets
so I could be married with your country garlanding my neck.
You didn't say anything because you were
scared of the lightning in me.
You did your best to heal the infection in my thorax.
For my wedding you took apart a staircase
and fashioned it into a palanquin
because you believe preserveable butterflies, even
prodigal ones, deserve to be carried elegantly
as though we are glass.
And I notice how hard you work and how hard and calloused
you've become.
I noticed you can't look me in the eyes
anymore because now I'm divorced too.
Too grown.
You keep ignoring the fragile vertebrae of your spine
to drag rocks and pour cement because, like me, you
never ever give up.
And the other day, baba, I scrubbed at the dirt
beneath my nails with a brush like you used to.
Don't you see I am you?
A young cocoon in wartime split open too soon,
then fluttering far from home along that path of old world
water.
OK, so what if we did end up in the new one,
where our native four wings are still being pinched then
slit by unwelcome predators?
Speaking of, the soldier I chose is so like you.
He helps me be more breeze and less tornado,
which helps me say, I'm sorry, I didn't
know how to handle being the first of my own kind.
I long for you now as the night scarfs down
another irresistible bowl of something cold and sweet
with a teaspoon.
I wish I could tell you marigolds
can heal a person struck by lightning,
or carry them across a river safely.
That butterflies have both scales and wings.
That it's not your fault. It was never
your fault. Maybe you already know."