WEBVTT

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Good evening, everybody.

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Thank you so much for coming
out the day after a holiday

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to hear poetry.

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Yay.

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Poetry is alive.

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And thank you so much to the
entire team at the Poetry

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Center who is so generous with
their time and their attention

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to writers.

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I'm so happy to be here.

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I'm still new to Arizona.

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I haven't quite been
here a full year,

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so this is my first summer.

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And I am doing good.

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And I have just found that
Arizona has been so welcoming,

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and has been a really--

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such a place that I
have found home already.

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So thank you all so
much, and for coming out

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to hear me and
July read tonight.

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I'm going to be reading
from two of my manuscripts

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and then a couple of new pieces
at the end to sort of show you

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some variety, and a little
bit of the breadth of the work

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that I do.

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It's always nice to hear some
new pieces as well, right.

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So I'm going to start
from A Form and Gather.

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And the piece that I'm
going to read first,

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and you're never supposed
to say this as a poet,

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but I actually have a
favorite poem that I wrote.

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And this is one of
my favorite poems

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because it talks a little
bit about me, and who I am,

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and who I am with my partner.

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We are fanatic
documentary watchers.

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We know that there are places
that I'm never going to go,

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like the moon.

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I'm probably never
going to go to the moon.

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I probably never going to go to
the highest peaks in Patagonia.

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I want to, but I'm probably not.

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As well as the deep sea.

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The deep, deep ocean is
quite an obsession with me

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in metaphoric as well as
thought-provoking ways.

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And so in watching
this one documentary,

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my mind kept reeling,
and reeling, and reeling.

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Thinking about what makes us
up, what makes us something.

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What makes us special.

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So this poem is called, "Decoy."

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I am the ocean bottom.

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My crater is full
of bioluminescence.

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Twinkling and heavy, heavy dark.

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Who speaks to the float
circling inside them.

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Cut open a creature.

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What do you expect?

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A line of labels
and a thing exposed.

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Think clever me.

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Let's slice an eel,
pare down parts.

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See how we mean.

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Now you, eel under
knife, now me,

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hold the blade away from
anything that tears.

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Coal, the power of
light, of adaptation.

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The fish in heavy wet with
a glowing lure on its head.

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That's something.

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Do you need to collect
all parts to be something?

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When first you swim, flesh
remembers amniotic everything.

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You, on the other hand, ignore
the innate sense of fluidity.

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When I say you, I mean, I.
A little I thou never hurt,

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as long as you fasten
others' oxygen mask first.

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I am a giant tube worm.

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Plume scarlet.

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Think hemoglobin.

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Think what carries in
the presence of sulfide.

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Think insides I wear out.

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And you consider float the decoy
made of bob and shine and teeth

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and fins and, and, and.

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