WEBVTT

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All right.

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So I'm going to read a few more.

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Then, yeah, I'm going
to read a new poem.

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And then I'll see if
you guys want to talk.

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"Elegy"

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I was going to read
the title poem.

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I honestly was.

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But Grace's student just--

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I mean Grace's friend--

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she just like, she
read it for me,

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so I'm just not even
going to mess with that.

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It's recorded.

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She did an excellent job.

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I will say that one thing
I liked about it is she

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took lines from different
points in the poem.

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A lot of times people
do a found poem

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and they just take the first
seven lines and rearrange them.

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But she actually went to
different places in the poem.

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I was like, "damn
that shit is good!"

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[LAUGHTER]

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And then I feel
like that's arrogant

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because I was like,
"oh, I wrote that."

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That's kind of--

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[LAUGHTER]

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So I'm going to read a few more.

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"Elegy with a RIP Shirt
Turning into the Wind"

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Some days away from
me the air turns,

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and I pray pistols
into my hands,

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as if there is a peace that
will open up with bullets,

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with a "blucka-blucka-blucka"
of a hammer's siren.

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In the streets the boys play
a game they call "throwback."

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It is football,
every man for himself

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as he weaves under the wires
above Mississippi Avenue.

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The sneakers swinging above
his juking body like machetes

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are fresh--

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Jordans, Air Force 1s,
and Chuck Taylors--

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singing death songs when
the wind blows hard enough.

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Touchdowns are as
rare as angels,

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and when the boy turns his
body, the Rest In Peace

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shirt slants against the wind.

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And there is a moment where he
is not weighed down by gravity

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when he owns the moment before
he crashes into the other boys'

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waiting arms and they all
look like a dozen mannequins

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controlled by the
spinning sneaker strings

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of the dead boys above them.

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