WEBVTT

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And this goes on with the
sort of, confessional moments.

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This is a poem about
my mother who had a--

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she was a curser.

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She had a she had
a wonderfully--

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you know, the euphemism
would be acerbic wit,

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something like that.

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[LAUGHTER]

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And so it's just about that.

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It's about how-- it's
about that activity where

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you have to tell the old stories
over and over and over again.

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You have to remember the wounds
over and over and over again.

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There's no end to it.

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Most of you know that
there's such a thing

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as confessional poetry
and this is, sort of--

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which is the tradition
I come out of

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and this poem is called "The
Confessional Mode," sort of,

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commentary about telling
your worst stories

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and, sort of, the
dishonor of that.

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"The Confessional Mode."

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And most of the poem is
in the voice of my mother.

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They're quotes from her.

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"'I wish somebody would
take a razor and just slit

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my throat'--

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[LAUGHTER]

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--my mother often used to say.

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[LAUGHTER]

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At the lovely time of evening
when the stars gleamed

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like spangles on
a corset wrapped

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around the broad,
ungirlish waist of earth.

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'Put a bag over my
head, pretty please,

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and let me blow my
brains out in the sink.'

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[LAUGHTER]

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The mouth is such a
terrible instrument, such

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a bloody harmonica,
wailing with complaints,

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but it's the great
insulters we remember,

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the ones with a vocabulary
of cancer and barbed wire.

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'I'm the fucking Jew
here', she would announce,

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setting down the dinner plates,
smiling like a woman invited

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to consume a meal
of broken teeth.

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[LAUGHTER]

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And everyone would sigh and
shiver over their spaghetti--

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[LAUGHTER]

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--and wait for that particular
Russian novel to be over.

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[LAUGHTER]

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What strange appetites we
have that make us rewind time

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and summon up the
landscapes of our pain

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long after the lips
have been unleashed

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from the humiliated
smiles and the silverware

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gone to the graveyard
for old forks and knives.

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Yet some craving draws me
backwards and the words

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for telling it march
out of my mouth

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with a pleasure that
is almost biological.

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As if the telling was a,
sort of, sweet revenge.

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As if I had turned into
the person in my story,

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a little bit more
ruthless, old, and capable

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of saying anything."

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