WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:07.510 align:middle line:84% I was writing this book while my uncle was very sick, 00:00:07.510 --> 00:00:09.760 align:middle line:84% and so I'll read the poem I read last night out a bit. 00:00:09.760 --> 00:00:10.920 align:middle line:90% It's called "Hematology". 00:00:10.920 --> 00:00:14.190 align:middle line:90% 00:00:14.190 --> 00:00:19.080 align:middle line:84% While he lives, here's a list of images: 00:00:19.080 --> 00:00:25.320 align:middle line:84% light in a filthy glass, pigeon dead on a high spiked window, 00:00:25.320 --> 00:00:28.320 align:middle line:84% clear plastic bag above him full of water, 00:00:28.320 --> 00:00:33.750 align:middle line:84% if water could kill everything that lives in you and it can. 00:00:33.750 --> 00:00:35.970 align:middle line:84% I sit in the corner of the cancer ward 00:00:35.970 --> 00:00:39.990 align:middle line:84% fingering the app that shows me other faggots in the hospital. 00:00:39.990 --> 00:00:43.650 align:middle line:84% Chat with one I might meet in radiology but don't. 00:00:43.650 --> 00:00:47.730 align:middle line:84% Instead make the sick man laugh while he's conscious. 00:00:47.730 --> 00:00:52.110 align:middle line:84% Compliment his couture gown, the new brutal cheekbone 00:00:52.110 --> 00:00:54.600 align:middle line:90% that appeared with the chemo. 00:00:54.600 --> 00:00:58.770 align:middle line:84% If only it were as simple as a magnet sucking the bad metals 00:00:58.770 --> 00:01:00.240 align:middle line:90% out of him. 00:01:00.240 --> 00:01:02.730 align:middle line:84% If only I could make a better list, 00:01:02.730 --> 00:01:05.099 align:middle line:90% paraphrastic, restorative. 00:01:05.099 --> 00:01:09.000 align:middle line:84% If only I met that stranger in the basement and our pleasure 00:01:09.000 --> 00:01:13.470 align:middle line:84% rose through the hospital, bliss poultice for the sorrow skin 00:01:13.470 --> 00:01:17.040 align:middle line:84% to sit half conscious and half machinery. 00:01:17.040 --> 00:01:20.160 align:middle line:84% While the sick man lives, all I can do 00:01:20.160 --> 00:01:23.790 align:middle line:84% is recount the vast pastoral of his illness. 00:01:23.790 --> 00:01:27.810 align:middle line:84% When he is gone I'm counting on all the good flooding back. 00:01:27.810 --> 00:01:31.110 align:middle line:90% His beard, a collapsed country. 00:01:31.110 --> 00:01:34.200 align:middle line:84% His laugh, a memory so liquid I'll 00:01:34.200 --> 00:01:39.140 align:middle line:84% hear it when anyone opens a window to scare the birds. 00:01:39.140 --> 00:01:46.000 align:middle line:90%