So the thing that's connected to what I think
is interesting about Ai, is when I started thinking, well,
what if I wanted to write a persona poem, like,
this question of empathy for something like that,
could you write from his point of view?
And then, I was just thinking about models.
I like models, I like form, I like frames for context.
And I just couldn't think of any poets really that look really
in the mouth of a violent act.
So again, I feel metaphor allows us to often look away
from spectacle, even though it's all around us all the time.
And so, the only poet that I can think of that
does it, or did it, as a regular practice was Ai.
And so, I thought, well, what would I
write if she was writing a poem in the voice of this boy,
in the voice of Dylann Roof?
And then, rather than just working through that,
I thought, oh, I'll write a poem in the voice of Ai,
pretending to be Dylann Roof.
I knew that's very complicated.
But it's a trick, right?
It's just me trying to, well, how do
I get myself to feel empathy?
How do I get myself, you know, again, it's my hometown.
I know Lexington, I know everything he's from.
And so I thought, she's the only model.
And so we could have that conversation,
I guess, about her, about the practice.
Is that the practice of empathy, or is that the practice
of drama, to try to embody that to make spectacle
part of looking at something?
Even though, she's always inside of it, right?
This is what I meant about the outside bearing witness
and then getting down inside of it.
So this is the last poem.
And it's called "The Poet Ai as Dylann Roof."
In the hall of my grandmother's house
stood an old upright piano.
Wherever I touch the keys, sound sang and sprang out.
I never called anyone "nigger."
I never stood at the edge of a choir afraid to sing out.
Behind my white face, I wear the mask of a Black woman's face.
I am lonely enough to murder.
I am lonely enough to hate everything in my face.
The poet sees a blackbird stoned in a field.
The blackbird lives next to the stone like a lover with her
arms thrown open, with her small mouth open,
and out of which springs a song the boy cannot decipher.
Inside the Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal
Church, nine beautiful niggers pray in the pews like birds.
And I say, Jesus fucking Christ, to myself,
and my gun is heavier than the weight of a life.
When I was young, I found a blackbird with a broken wing
in a field.
And as I stoned the bird, I imagined
I was stoning a face until I was splattered with awe.
And when I got home from the field and went to my room,
I sang out a song of inevitable sorrow.
When I looked in the mirror and saw the eyes in a Black woman's
face, the skin, a glow in the distance, murder
is filled with sorrow
I don't know who cares.
I don't care who knows.
I am lonely, I am lonely, I am lonely.
All right y'all.
[APPLAUSE]