WEBVTT

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So I'll read some poems from
my second book, "Alight."

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And it was really a book
that was in conversation,

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or a continued conversation,
with the first book, "The Earth

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in the Attic,"
which I had written

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in part after my experience
with Doctors Without Borders.

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So, I'll just begin.

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"Tenor."

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"To break with the past
or break it with the past,

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the enormous
car-packed parking lot

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flashes like a frozen body
of water, a paparazzi sea

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after takeoff.

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And because the pigeons
laid eggs and could fly,

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because the kittens
could survive

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under the rubble wrapped
in shirts of the dead,

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and the half-empty
school benches where

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each boy sits next
to his absence

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and holds him in the
space between two palms

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press to a face.

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This world.

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This hospice."

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