WEBVTT

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She thinks I'm funny.

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[LAUGHTER]

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All right.

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I am bad at talking
or banter, so I'm just

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not going to do that.

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I'm just not going
to talk to you all.

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Is that OK?

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Because I hate you.

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I'm kidding, I'm kidding.

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So I'm going to first read a
couple of poems from the book,

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and then I'll read some
newer works I'm working on.

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OK.

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"I want nothing to do
with my mother's sadness.

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Her mouth a pockmark
on every door

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that opens onto a memorial

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scene, her mouth, the
beginning of traffic.

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Odd to think of it as a ugly
and frequent song on the radio.

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A small bird shitting
and dying in my hands.

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He is dead, she says
over and over again,

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except in Vietnamese.

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Which to me doesn't
sound as tragic.

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A little uglier maybe,
but less tragic for sure.

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The house phone on her
lap sings its dead hum

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into the static air
of our living room.

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Who?

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Who, I ask.

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I shake her shoulders, who?

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When she finally looks
at me through the slit

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of her black bangs, she
tells me about the man

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she would have married
if she stayed in Vietnam.

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And my posture straightens,
and my eyes roll.

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And I'm relieved at the
absence of my own grief,

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and I hate him.

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This man, this dead man
that won't stay gone.

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Now that he's gone for good.

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Now that he has built a
house of meat to rot and stew

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on the sunniest days.

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Now that he fills the marrow in
each bone of my mother's regret

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when she thinks of love.

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Either she's a
widow or divorced.

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And I believed for
a while that regret

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is leaving the burning
house empty handed,

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but he is already ash.

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And I tell her she
made the right choice.

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Which is funny, because
I hate my father

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and often forget that
he's still alive."

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