WEBVTT

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| have a very young
participant here

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who is going to choose the last
poem that I will share with you

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and then I'll read it.

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Pick a good one.

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OK let me see what it says.

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OK I'm going to look.

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OK pick another one.

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[LAUGHTER]

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She didn't pick
the one she wanted.

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Like that one.

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I think the first one
was good, don't you?

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Tell us your name.

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Do you want to see
it in the microphone?

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OK.

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Tell us your name.

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My name is Betty Reyes.

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I go at boarding school.

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Dennehotso Boarding School
is where I go in Dennehotso.

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Betty you're awesome.

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Do you think that
I could give you

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a small hug around the shoulder?

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Thank you so much.

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[APPLAUSE]

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So believe it or not, the thing
that Betty chose was a video.

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And the slip of
paper that she read

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and not one that I picked for
her said tell us some things

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that you're working
on right now.

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So I'm going to share with you
a brief video poem that I've

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been working on for a project
for the Smithsonian Asian

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Pacific American Center called
A Day in the Queer Life.

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And there are 12 video poems
representative of queer Asian

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or Pacific Islanders.

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The project is designed
to give us visibility

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and to give us the opportunity
to tell our own stories

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about how are you doing.

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It's a check in.

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What is it like to be
queer and you today.

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All of the footage
in these videos

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these films that we
produce are taken by us.

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So everything that you see
is probably from my iPhone.

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And then there's a
story that goes over.

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Thank you very much.

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Yeah, I think it
comes on in a second.

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No, but should it
be on right now.

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[VIDEO PLAYBACK]

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A measurement of
width and without.

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The ecstatic penetration
of sperm into egg.

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Current I consider we
are made almost entirely

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of water and electricity.

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So our vernacular of emotion
employs surge, wave, spark,

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impulse and current, the
flood of salt or rush

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of crackling blue pulse
of irking rivulet.

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A measurement of
width and without.

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The ecstatic penetration
of sperm into egg.

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We have all seen the
microscopic iconography.

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The womb-less state
will ordain this.

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The electric moment
of life will brand

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each womb sanctified property.

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My mother was conceived during
a war waged on Brown bodies

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and birthed me under a
moon obscured by flags.

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Electric layers of
ocean reveal themselves

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as an ancestral coding
of me and her, and her,

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and her as this
spear and the plunge.

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The cavern of hand prints,
the caverns of decapitation.

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The lightning spark cannot be
created because it was already

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there.

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In the gloam, human nostalgia
presses to know where,

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when, which God's touch the
first impulse of light into

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darkness.

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First enacted a separation
of shadow into meaning,

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yet I fork, bead, ribbon
the light into existence,

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insistence with each sloughing
of salt water blood each

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recollection of current.

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Current tunnel each or more.

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Our people were shaped from
stone and the pulsing sea.

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Sisters crouched
body wave needed

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salt lapped until we tumbled
from her, of her, of them.

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All strong, strong
and hold together.

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Birds regarded our
sea foam anklets,

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our slippery ropes of hair.

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Our cheeks full of
pebbles and scattered

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from the shore singing.

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We opened our new mouths
to our own chorus crooning

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sister, brother.

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We are sun, moon, sky,
water, Earth, all siblings.

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Current.

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I believe in
reincarnation and so much

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as I know an ancestor passed to
me the memory of making oneself

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into a universe.

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One self current
connected to no.

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Concurrent with every iteration
of subatomic movement.

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How then am I queer,
queer, queered?

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I am also only
queer because there

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is a world outside of mine.

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If the world were only
me I would seem just so.

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A micro-cosmos of animal,
mineral, plant, light,

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electric I, current,
yet the world.

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Here is what I can
say, I am I. Warrior

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I, glacier I, photon I, vine
I, rivulet I, integer I,

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summoner I.

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Wave I, exhalation I,
mother I, lava I. Hilum I,

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hyphen I, I, I, current.

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Prism I and culture
bending through me.

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The world spits, grapples,
tries to tie me up

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in basements to rid
themselves of my insistence.

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Ancestor wired me a path within.

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Inside the brick spaces
throughout and becoming

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the walls and clouds,
I swallow bolts.

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I expand, I empty, I carry
within a hundred thousand wombs

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of spectacular light.

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[END PLAYBACK]