WEBVTT

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All right.

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So this is the last
one from the book

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before we talk
about current work.

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And again, same, I
mean, I could almost

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say if it wasn't in the book, I
wrote this particularly because

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of our topic tonight.

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But it's in the book, so
you wouldn't believe me.

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But it is totally about seeing,
about looking, about spectacle,

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about violence, and in some
ways, I mean, in the way

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that all my poems are
about sex, also about sex,

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so but it is about beholding.

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So "How to Draw A
Perfect Circle."

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I can imitate the spheres
of the model's body,

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her head, her
mouth, the chin she

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rests at the bend of her elbow.

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But nothing tells me how
to make the pupils spiral

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from her gaze.

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Everything the eye
sees enters a circle.

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The world is connected
to a circle--

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breath spools from the nostrils
and any love to be open

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becomes an O.

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The shape inside the
circle is a circle.

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The egg falling outside the
nest the serpent circles

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rests in the serpent's gaze the
way my gaze rests on the model.

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In a blind contour
drawing, the eye

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tracks the subject
without observing

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what the hand is doing.

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Everything is connected by
a line curling and canceling

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itself like the shape
of a snake swallowing

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its own decadent tail or a mind
that means to destroy itself,

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a man circling a
railway underpass

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before attacking a policeman.

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To draw the model's
nipples, I have

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to let myself be carried away.

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I love all the
parts of the body.

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There are as many curves as
there are jewels of matrimony,

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as many whirls as
there are teeth

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in the mouth of the future--

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the mute pearls a bride wears
to her wedding, the sleeping

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ovaries like the heads of
riders benched in a tunnel.

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The doors of the subway
car imitate an O, opening

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and closing.

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In the blood, the
O spirals its helix

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of defects, genetic
shadows, but there

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are no instructions
for identifying

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loved ones who go crazy.

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When one morning, a Black
man stabs a Black transit

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cop in the face, and the
cop, bleeding from his eye,

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kills the assailant, no
one traveling to the subway

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sees it quickly enough to
make a camera phone witness.

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The scene must be
carried on the tongue.

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It must be carried on the
news into the future where

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it will distract the eyes
working lines into paper.

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This is what blind contour
drawing conjures in me.

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At the center of
God looms and O.

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The devil believes
justice is shaped

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like a zero, a militant
helmet or war drum,

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of fist or gun barrel, a barrel
of ruined eggs or skulls.

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To lift anything from
a field, the lifter

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bends like a broken
O. The weight

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of the body lowered into
a hole can make anyone

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say, oh, the onlookers,
the mother, the brothers

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and sisters.

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Omen begins with an O.

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When I looked into
my past, I saw

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the boy I had not seen in
years do a standing backflip,

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so daring the onlookers
called him crazy.

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I did not see a moon
as white as an onion,

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but I saw a paper
plate upon which

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the boy held a plastic
knife and sopping meat.

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An assailant is a
man with history.

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His mother struggles to cut
an onion preparing a meal

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to be served after the funeral.

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The onion is the best
symbol of the O. Sliced,

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a volatile gas stings
the slicer's eyes

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like a punishment,
clouding them until they

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see what someone trapped
beneath a lid of water sees--

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a soft-edged world, a blur of
blooms holding a coffin afloat.

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The onion is pungent.

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Its scent infects
the air with sadness.

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All the pallbearers smell it.

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The mourners watch each other.

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They watch the
pastor's ambivalence.

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They wait for the doors to open.

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They wait for the appearance of
the wounded, one-eyed victim,

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and his advocates,
strangers who did not

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consider the assailants
funeral appeasement.

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Before that day, the officer
had never fired his gun

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in the line of duty.

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He was chatting
with the cab driver

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beneath the tracks
when my cousin circled

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him holding a knife.

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The wound caused
no brain damage,

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though his eyeball was severed.

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I am not sure how a
man with no eye weeps.

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In The Odyssey,
pink water descends

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the Cyclop's cratered face after
Odysseus drives a burning log

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into it.

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Anyone could do it.

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Anyone could begin
the day with his eyes

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and end it blind or deceased.

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Anyone could lose his
mind or his vision.

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When I go crazy, I am afraid
I will walk the streets naked.

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I am afraid I will shout every
fucked up thing that troubles

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or enchant me.

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I will try to murder or
make love to everybody

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before the police
handcuff or murder me.

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Though the bullet
exits a perfect hole,

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it does not leave perfect
holes in the body.

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A wound is a cell and a portal.

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Without it, the blood
runs with no outlet.

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It is possible to draw
handcuffs using loops shaped

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like the symbol for infinity,
the Latin infinitus,

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meaning unboundedness.

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The way you get to
anything is context.

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In a blind contour, it is not
possible to give your subject

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a disconnected gaze.

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Separated from the
hand, the artist's eye

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begins its own journey.

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It could have been the same
for the Cyclops, a giant whose

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gouged eye socket was so large
a whole onion could fit into it.

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Separated from the body, the
eye begins its own journey.

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The world comes full circle--

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the hours, the harvest.

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When the part of the
body that holds the soul

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is finally decomposed, it
becomes a circle, the hole

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that holds everything--

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blemish, cell, womb, parts
of the body no one can see.

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I watch the model pull a
button loose on her jeans

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and step out of them as
one might out of a hole

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in a blue valley, a sea.

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I found myself in the dark.

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I found myself entering her
body like a delicate shell

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or soft pill, like this curved
thumb of mine against her lips.

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You must look without looking
to make a perfect circle.

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The line, the mind must be
a blind continuous liquid

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until the drawing is complete.

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