This is a poem for Diana Delgado, who
is a very important person here, if you don't know already,
at the Poetry Center, and who was a student of mine
some years ago.
I don't know if you know that, but in the back of this book,
it says for Diana Marie Delgado.
This poem.
I don't know if you know that.
This is dedicated to you in my book.
[INAUDIBLE]
[LAUGHTER]
I'm so embarrassed.
No, I'm sorry.
No, no.
Don't be embarrassed.
No.
I did know that.
Oh, you did.
Thank you for sort of sharing that.
Just, thank you.
OK.
Well, I only bring it up because Diana is a phenomenal poet.
You know, when you're a teacher, you only
get a handful of students in your lifetime who are brilliant
and who just knock your socks off, and Diana was one of them.
And so it was an honor to be your teacher,
and it's an honor to know your work now.
When her book comes out, which is happening in September?
September.
You must rush and buy it, because it's so good.
OK.
See, I just did a whole little--
I should be.
I should, but here I am.
All right, so, enough fanfare.
Enough.
This is "El Dia de Los Muertos."
"10 candied skulls are lined up ghoulishly
upon the shelves of La Bocanegra Bakery.
Though some stare gleefully at passersby,
others glare vacantly, this All Saints Day,
into the hot blasts of yeasty steam
that waft out like dreams from fiery ovens in the back.
"Three whitened bakers exercise strong hands
to work doughy miracles in a careful dance with time.
The dead are all around us here and everywhere,
though we are blind as air and only feel their gaze
when knives of loss peel back the stupor of our lives.
Hunger barely masks the longing in their eyes,
for the dead dying emptily upon our sighs,
yet hope to harvest sweetness from our breath.
The dead love us with tacit tenderness.
"Behind the bakery, the Sunday mourners picnic
on the graves of family members, shivering in the cold,
sucking the sugary bones of their ancestors.
Expectant mothers entomb the names of their unborn lives
that are swelling like bread, leavened in the invisible arms
of the dead."
Here I said I was going to read poems about women and about
death, but OK.
[LAUGHTER]
I don't know what the connection is there.
Should be-- I don't know how that happened.
OK.