WEBVTT

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All right, all right,
got to figure out

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how to work this thing.

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OK, so cool.

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So now we are actually
getting to the present moment.

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And I thought I would just
read two poems from "How

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to Be Drawn."

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And a lot of stuff is
going on in the book.

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But one of the things
that only gets framed now,

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recontextualize based
on tonight's occasion,

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is thinking like trying
to braid those two

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things inside and outside,
to bear witness to it,

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to enact it, to be a victim of
it, of spectacle of violence.

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So I think, in some ways,
I just picked two poems

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that I thought were trying
to do that on this book,

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and then to see what that
means for the next, like,

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what comes after
that is what I'm

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thinking about in this last
poem that I'll share with you.

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But here are two from
"How to Be Drawn."

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So this one is "The Deer."

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I guess, there's not
much to say about it.

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Muscadine is a little berry
that grows in the Southeast.

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And it is like--

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the joke that I tell is
that they would sell them

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in Whole Foods like in Tucson,
and you would buy them.

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But in South Carolina, they're
just wild little berries.

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But my mother would get them.

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And it's like this
muscadine wine,

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if you know anything
about that area.

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So I guess that's
all you need to know.

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And Pataskala is a town in Ohio.

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"The Deer."

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Outside Pataskala,
I saw the deer

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with the soft white belly, the
deer with two eyes as blind

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as holes.

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I saw it leap from a bush beside
the highway as if a moment

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before it leapt it had been
a bush beside the highway.

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And I saw how if I wished it,
I could be the deer, a creature

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bony as a branch in spring.

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And when I closed my
eyes, I found the scent

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of muscadine, the berry
my mother plucked Sundays

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from the roadside
where fumes toughened

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its speckled skin and seeds
slept suspended in a mucus

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thick as the sleep of an embryo.

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It is the ugliest
berry along the road.

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But chewed, it
reminded me of speed.

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And I saw, when I
was the deer, that I

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didn't have to be a deer.

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I could become a machine
with the woman inside it,

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moving at a speed that
leaves a stain on the breeze

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and on the muscadine's
flesh, which is almost meat,

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the sweet pulp of
muscadine leaves

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when it's crushed in
the teeth of a deer,

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or a mother for that
matter, or her child waiting

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with something like shame to be
fed a berry uglier than shame.

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Though, it is not like
this for the deer.

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It is not shame.

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Because the deer is not human.

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It is only almost human when
it looks on the road and leaps

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at least 30 feet, covering in
a blink the deer I cannot be,

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the dumb deer, dumb and foolish
enough to ignore anything that

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runs but is not alive, a
trafficking machine filled with

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a distracted mind and body
deadly and durable enough

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to deconstruct a deer when
it leaps, I'm telling you,

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like someone being chased.

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I remember, a friend told me
how when he was eight or nine,

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a half naked woman
ran to the car window

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crying her man was
after her with a knife.

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But his mother locked
the doors and sped away.

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Someone tell him his
mother was not a coward.

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That's what he thinks.

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Tell him it was because
he and his little brother

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were in the car
that she would not

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let the troubled world inside.

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It was no one's fault. The
mind separated from the body.

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I could almost see
the holes of her eyes,

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the white fuzz on her
tongue, the raised

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buds soft as a bed of pink
seeds, the hole of a mouth

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stretched wide enough to
hold a whole baby inside.

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I could almost see its eyes
at the back of her throat.

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I could definitely
hear its cries.

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