WEBVTT

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Another form of 19th
century stage performer

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was a spirit rapper.

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They were dancers,
and their work

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gets explained in the first
couple of lines of this poem.

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"Who Sells the Shadow?"

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"To dance only among
spirit rappers,

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in bodies where women,
Negroes, natives, it was said,

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were acted out.

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For Reverend Madison, they
were vehicles of impurity.

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My children, too, have
learned a barbarous tongue,

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though it's not so sure.

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They will rise to high
command, wrote Du Fu.

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Or how about Bernadette
Mayer on New England?

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A boy tried to hang a dog
in a playground, she said.

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You tried several spaces today--

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under a desk, a nook bent
to your body brought around.

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What about all the rooms the
sky makes, a faint blue expanse?

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A long far line of electric
poles, a mountain I can see,

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dog yelps--

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almost digital.

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Maybe from inside a car
parked at the Dollar General.

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I guess anyone dreaming a
state could visit and detonate,

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in-sourcing a kind of defense.

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But here the sky behaves itself
with just enough war over us.

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As a family feast photographed,
frames time in our house.

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You made your first
marks today on this page.

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To my empowered friends,
I love your story."