[APPLAUSE]
To close out the night of my portion of the night, rather--
[LAUGHS]
[AUDIENCE MEMBER HECKLES]
[LAUGHS] So this is this manuscript called "Feed."
It's coming out next year at some point.
The excerpt that I'm going to read
is, kind of, a spring and reconciliation,
and the loneliness of being a traveling performer,
and also how to know what it is that feeds you,
and then death--
LOL.
[CHUCKLES]
[LAUGHTER]
So this is "Feed."
"Are you an introvert or an extrovert?" he whispers.
Black light, blackout, as his biggie,
big balls bounce against the throat of my taint,
by which I just mean my taint.
Dear Reader, traveling is so romantic, ain't it?
Uh-oh, that bodes of dynamism and gutter
sluttery, a glittering sea of one-night stands
and kickstand dicks, camel blue ash, and pit stain tease.
Alexa, Siri, what time does Panda Express open?
Panda Express-- I mean, James Brown is dead.
Crowbar crack and awake, every fire
hydrant on every corner of every city
block and mainline that shit into my veins.
I'm planted in mustard-yellow slip-ons
at the waterfront of a new city made
of mustard greens, metaphorical tetherball courts,
and a literal city.
SEPTA, Charm City Circulator, MTBA--
I'm sprouting a pink tank top at the bus stop of a new city made
of absinthe, sugar cubes, metaphorical troll doll,
jewel-belly t-shirts, and literal britches.
I mean bridges--
L train, Amtrak, a streetcar named I'm tired--
[LAUGHTER]
[AUDIENCE MEMBER SCREAMS]
[LAUGHS]
[AUDIENCE MEMBER SCREAMS]
[LAUGHS]
[AUDIENCE MEMBER HECKLES]
I've grown spray-on, skinny, high-waisted, acid-washed old
fashioneds at the hotel bar of the new city made
of tucked-in, black "Wayne's World" t-shirts,
(SINGING) oh, dreamweaver, and literal roundabouts.
Portland, Oregon is a bunch of White people in a brew pub
whose name is just two unrelated nouns like brush and mortar,
or smoke and sage, or jam and Freddy Krueger glove--
expectant faces expecting me to smile back?
I don't do that.
Portland, Maine, the other White Portland,
is a (LAUGHING) bunch of full-leg pants and pansexuals.
[LAUGHTER]
Dear Reader, (SIGHING) hi.
Do you hear the moaning plane overhead?
Do you feel the beating heat on your t-zone?
A sizzle of foam on the water?
Poems light up corridors of the mind, like food.
I grew up on a food desert--
a speck of dust on the map of the United States,
a Indian reservation east of San Diego in a valley
surrounded by tall mountains that
slice through the cloud like a loaf,
where the average age of death is 40.7 years old.
I'm 34.
I live in the busiest city in America.
I'm about to eat an orange.
Every feed owes itself to death.
Poetry is feed for the horses within me.
Tonight, I'm pierogies--
Ross Pierogies.
[LAUGHS] Beer-battered fish tacos and jalapeno
cornbread, aloe lavender face scoops, obsessively
checking my bank balance, and vocal rest
stop in Connecticut that has a Subaru, a Pick n Mix candy
store, a Taco Bell and a Chipotle-- proof
that linear time is a goddamn sham.
[LAUGHTER]
[AUDIENCE MEMBER HECKLES]
Yes!
Once, I wrote about being ancestrally from a desert.
That drought made me restless, searching
for a nourishing territory.
You know how some people are all that?
[CHUCKLES SARCASTICALLY] Well, I'm all appetite--
hunger pang and ambulance siren speeding
to another needy feeling.
[INHALES SHARPLY] Shall I be a poem for you?
I mean, I used "shall," TBH.
[CHUCKLES] Me AF.
The human condition, SMDH.
The Bible, LOL.
Bibliosexual?
WTF?
The library-- IYKWIM?
No territory will ever satisfy me--
AF.
[LAUGHTER]
Cousin dies-- some overdose.
And another cousin has a daughter.
Incel man plows into people with a truck in Toronto--
mostly women.
And there are something like 70 million
more men than women in China and India.
And Roy says he has a new metaphor, except it's not
a metaphor because the literal part of his heart has died,
says the echocardiogram he got just before starting a new med.
But it's fine.
He just needs to eat more farty salads.
And Mamihlapinatapai is the most precise word,
according to linguists from the Yaghan language of Tierra Del
Fuego.
Something like, when you leave a cafe bathroom
and want to tell the person in line next to you
it wasn't you who took the smelliest dump
in American history, but you keep walking.
Or the word means something like,
when two people look at each other
and the look is, you both know what the other should do
but neither wants to initiate.
And then, Wilkes says, after talking about her noninvasive
surgery, that John Krasinski is the shortest-- at 6'3"--
is the shortest of three brothers.
The other two, 6'8" and 6'9".
And I start to pal-pi-tate.
My back arch is so hard, I snap in half.
On the link light rail on the way
to drop my stuff off at Rich's in Cap Hill before checking
with Colleen, before my reading in Mount Analog at Zzz Space.
And imagine being the mozzarella in between that fucking
baguette!
Are you kidding me?
6'8" and 6'9"?
I need to be in a small closet in a shoebox apartment
in the cut of the sticks--
like totally alone, suffocating into a paper bag.
And Jess text me that she got a mass
inside her the size of an orange.
And she's going under next week.
And I'm practicing lines for when
I officiate Becky's wedding.
Some kind of grand metaphor about the golden hour--
that light, that sliver of golden light
that's light unlike a light-- any other light
you'll ever encounter.
Nothing we've ever made can come close to that glow--
not a filter, not a software, not a bulb.
A gathering of circumstances that produce the light of you
right now, in this moment.
And someone tells me, "You should wait five years
in between publishing books.
Like, what's the rush?"
And I'm like, "Did you not just read?
My cousin died today.
And he was only two years older than me.
And it's been that way my whole life.
Like, (ELONGATING) bitch, I would
love to imagine being alive in five years.
But I have these bones, you know?
And just like that, I'm writing a poem, a poem, a poem again.
The ephemeral garden-- big blooms, big,
bold, and beautiful.
Sip spoonfuls of air, the feral perfume.
Razzle dazzle and jazz cigarettes in the June Jordan
almond afternoon.
It's spring!
I'm tired of being grave.
(SINGING) Let's talk about death, baby.
What a better time than in the face of spring and the spring
ephemeral--
a bloom so short, it puts the fleet in fleeting feeling,
which--
OK, fleet is on sale for like 1,99 at Walgreens--
[CHUCKLES] spring cleaning.
Rich and Willy and Chase talk about the Proud Boys
stalking up Cap Hill in Seattle--
70 strong.
The 70, 70 strong-- twice the size
they were last year, not to fight, Chase says,
intones, They're mostly nonviolent frat boys
just trying to disrupt the community.
And I feel like a backslash running through me, blood
leaking from uncooked meat.
Not like Palestine protest, Jerusalem Embassy
massacre, or in Pakistan where the journalist disappeared,
or Mogadishu bustling city-center bombs,
or ICE losing thousands of kids at every turn,
targeting target rash explosion of ticks,
nearing Lyme season again, targeting
churches and sanctuaries, and sanctuary cities and the bombs.
And the bombs, and the bombs fly over state drones,
fly over other countries.
And the LOL president says, we tamed the continent
and we aren't apologizing for America.
And murdered and missing indigenous women never ever,
ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever,
ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever,
ever get an article or a shout-out or a headline.
But that White crisis actor lady,
who advocates for police brutality,
got water splashed in her face at a brunch spot,
or the mouthpiece of the regime getting denied service at a Red
Hen, or staffers bombed out at their treatment in public
to outcry.
And it's like, IDK!
If I'm even here, WTF.
The ancient Egyptians used to worship cats.
And now they're dead.
Thank you.
[CHEERING AND APPLAUSE]