WEBVTT

00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.190 align:middle line:90%


00:00:02.190 --> 00:00:05.400 align:middle line:84%
The other devotional
object figure

00:00:05.400 --> 00:00:06.600 align:middle line:90%
comes up in the next poem.

00:00:06.600 --> 00:00:13.080 align:middle line:84%
San Martín was an Afro-Peruvian
ex-slave who became a Saint

00:00:13.080 --> 00:00:15.960 align:middle line:84%
in the Catholic church,
kind of like Saint Francis,

00:00:15.960 --> 00:00:18.790 align:middle line:90%
with animals finding comfort.

00:00:18.790 --> 00:00:24.245 align:middle line:84%
And my mother used to keep
a little figurine of his

00:00:24.245 --> 00:00:24.870 align:middle line:90%
on the dresser.

00:00:24.870 --> 00:00:29.820 align:middle line:90%


00:00:29.820 --> 00:00:32.955 align:middle line:84%
"So to my empowered
friends, I love your story.

00:00:32.955 --> 00:00:35.750 align:middle line:90%


00:00:35.750 --> 00:00:38.780 align:middle line:84%
Like the shapes we made
and the things we said

00:00:38.780 --> 00:00:42.230 align:middle line:84%
were demanding of
us, now you ask me

00:00:42.230 --> 00:00:46.760 align:middle line:84%
why the sky is a tank
full of lemonade out back.

00:00:46.760 --> 00:00:49.940 align:middle line:84%
All wet tonight, and
bugs call up a swamp

00:00:49.940 --> 00:00:52.980 align:middle line:90%
in this desert in my story.

00:00:52.980 --> 00:00:56.540 align:middle line:84%
My dad wrote all the
wrong names for her

00:00:56.540 --> 00:00:59.120 align:middle line:90%
on a brick that could lift.

00:00:59.120 --> 00:01:05.120 align:middle line:84%
Through my mother's window came
the words arrayed in glass.

00:01:05.120 --> 00:01:10.160 align:middle line:84%
Dusting San Martincito on
her dresser, cast in plastic,

00:01:10.160 --> 00:01:12.710 align:middle line:90%
with spaces in his robes.

00:01:12.710 --> 00:01:14.540 align:middle line:90%
A home for the hen.

00:01:14.540 --> 00:01:19.610 align:middle line:84%
The dog made mild in the
skirts of the mongrel Saint.

00:01:19.610 --> 00:01:23.360 align:middle line:84%
Still lining a
thin, easy silence,

00:01:23.360 --> 00:01:27.920 align:middle line:84%
around me come the scenes
all down our street.

00:01:27.920 --> 00:01:33.740 align:middle line:84%
In someone's car music, each
word lifted into its own space.

00:01:33.740 --> 00:01:39.350 align:middle line:84%
Thumps in the moon's heavy sleep
breath, there are extensions.

00:01:39.350 --> 00:01:41.870 align:middle line:90%
We can read what we said.

00:01:41.870 --> 00:01:44.090 align:middle line:90%
It's such a simple print shop.

00:01:44.090 --> 00:01:50.660 align:middle line:84%
So mothers might tell us about
what came to be more known.

00:01:50.660 --> 00:01:53.330 align:middle line:90%
A pear tree in the commons.

00:01:53.330 --> 00:01:58.100 align:middle line:84%
And really, the words
left idle beside.

00:01:58.100 --> 00:02:00.200 align:middle line:84%
If they could tell
us about the forms,

00:02:00.200 --> 00:02:03.800 align:middle line:84%
if these came to lift
them, if we could ask,

00:02:03.800 --> 00:02:16.240 align:middle line:84%
sin miedo y sin piedad, wouldn't
they, the mothers, never

00:02:16.240 --> 00:02:19.260 align:middle line:90%
say there was a time?

00:02:19.260 --> 00:02:23.670 align:middle line:84%
What hovers turns behind
maybe two feet up.

00:02:23.670 --> 00:02:27.390 align:middle line:84%
From our scapula, a moon's
heavy heel in the water.

00:02:27.390 --> 00:02:33.390 align:middle line:84%
An Aleppo daughter in my line
ordered from a bride book,

00:02:33.390 --> 00:02:37.920 align:middle line:84%
bringing the wrong
language to the Andes.

00:02:37.920 --> 00:02:43.020 align:middle line:84%
Her new stepkids taking
her first stillborn

00:02:43.020 --> 00:02:47.430 align:middle line:84%
by the heel, far
from her Arabic.

00:02:47.430 --> 00:02:49.840 align:middle line:90%
Taunting.

00:02:49.840 --> 00:02:52.060 align:middle line:90%
I've seen their pictures.

00:02:52.060 --> 00:02:55.120 align:middle line:84%
They were beautiful
young people.

00:02:55.120 --> 00:02:58.420 align:middle line:84%
And those minutes that
they feel in their mouths,

00:02:58.420 --> 00:03:01.900 align:middle line:84%
there are spaces
for the refusals.

00:03:01.900 --> 00:03:05.770 align:middle line:84%
But we've heard migrants
carried cultures in their dough.

00:03:05.770 --> 00:03:09.010 align:middle line:84%
Little strains of
living stretching back

00:03:09.010 --> 00:03:13.510 align:middle line:84%
to out-leap our
generations with their own.

00:03:13.510 --> 00:03:17.740 align:middle line:84%
Collapsing days into what
they've written for us.

00:03:17.740 --> 00:03:20.980 align:middle line:90%
Socializing the mother function.

00:03:20.980 --> 00:03:25.030 align:middle line:84%
A daughter in your
mother's line grew

00:03:25.030 --> 00:03:32.200 align:middle line:84%
to offer her English-less milk
to strange babies in a Newark

00:03:32.200 --> 00:03:34.630 align:middle line:90%
tenement.

00:03:34.630 --> 00:03:40.570 align:middle line:84%
And once, in a parking lot
around an igneous intrusion

00:03:40.570 --> 00:03:48.730 align:middle line:84%
called Enchanted Rock, we saw a
daughter searching the asphalt.

00:03:48.730 --> 00:03:53.320 align:middle line:84%
And her father screaming,
'If you lost it,

00:03:53.320 --> 00:03:56.170 align:middle line:90%
I will destroy you.'

00:03:56.170 --> 00:04:01.090 align:middle line:84%
Not unhinged, but large,
stretching the wet outlines

00:04:01.090 --> 00:04:05.320 align:middle line:84%
of his organs to chamber
the particular grain

00:04:05.320 --> 00:04:08.470 align:middle line:90%
of his voices promise.

00:04:08.470 --> 00:04:14.110 align:middle line:84%
And here goes my voice trying
to fit opposite promises

00:04:14.110 --> 00:04:15.850 align:middle line:90%
in relation.

00:04:15.850 --> 00:04:21.389 align:middle line:84%
For you would there
be no address."

00:04:21.389 --> 00:04:22.363 align:middle line:90%