[APPLAUSE]
Thank you for that introduction, William,
and thank you everyone for being here today.
It's just really a pleasure to see so many
of my friends and families and colleagues here.
It's just a real honor, so thank you.
Also special thank you to Barbara Cully,
who not only made this opportunity possible for me
by being my nominator, but also has
been an advocate for my work in many capacities, and a reader,
and a mentor, and a friend.
So thank you, Barbara.
I really appreciate it.
I also-- thank you to the Poetry Center for this opportunity.
And as many of you know, we have a world-renowned gem here.
There's really nothing like the Poetry Center,
and the caliber of readers that they bring in is phenomenal.
So to be among them is nothing I could have imagined,
and I'm really, really excited to be here.
And also, working in a nonprofit capacity,
I want to just underscore the value of an opportunity
like this, made possible by the generosity
and in the memory of Mary Ann, and the generosity of people,
philanthropists like Bill and Pam and Tony.
Thank you so much.
I can't tell you what this means for someone who doesn't--
who really writes in my quiet little way
and has my small group.
But to be able to share, it's really special, so thank you.
So I am going to take a small opportunity
to do a public service announcement
for the organization I work for, before I read.
I am Executive Director of Voices.
We work with youth 14 to 21 to document their--
to help them, provide them with a safe space and the skills
training and positive relationships
to document their real-life stories.
And we also help provide platforms,
to share them with the world.
I have copies of the magazine that our youth produce.
It's over here on this table.
So after the reading tonight, if you
want to pick one up and take it with you, please do.
I also want to ask you to mark your calendars for May 13th.
That is another reading of our youth work, also
an exhibit of their artwork, their photographs.
So please do come.
We would love to have you.
It's free.
It's, I think, one of the most amazing readings in Tucson.
And tonight I'm so happy that so many Voices colleagues
and youth and board members and advocates are here tonight.
It's really-- and donors and contributors
to the work that we do.
So thank you so much.
I really do feel like that is as much a calling for me
as my writing.
So I'm pleased to speak about that.
And onto the poems.
My first section that I'm going to read is from my chapbook
that-- it's called Revenant, as Bill said, to be published
by Kore Press this spring.
It doesn't need much more of an introduction.
But I do want to say the poems in this piece
have, in this chapbook, have dramatic arc,
so that the book itself has a beginning, and a middle,
and an end.
And all of the poems build on each other
and speak to one another.
So I'm going to read them without--
they don't have titles.
So I'm going to read them all at once,
so you can kind of keep one in your mind
as we move on to the next, and think of it as part of a whole.
And I think I need a drink of water first.
Despite spray-painted tags on its low-slung concrete brick
wall, the alley seems more country road than city lam.
Pioneering, carved out of necessity.
Like a knuckle to the finger, the driveway
curves off the alley, ending in a wooden fence
the MacArthur sons built by hand.
But previously the house was condemned, squatted
and rewilding in the purity of decay,
a reduction or elevation, whichever one prefers.
No floor except dirt worn low along the footpath
and walls that softened to paste in a monsoon.
But they loved it anyway, their little adobe
bungalow with punch windows.
Above, a red-tiled roof.
Below, a foundation as solid as the rock eventually beneath.
Mrs. McArthur apologizes for the ruined curtains.
The former tenant smoked.
"It's a shame why he moved," she says.
And you ask.
"He killed someone.
Tried to hide the evidence."
Standing in your dirt lot front yard,
you wait until she leaves, cry, then unload
another box of books and consider
where the couch should go.
You disinfect kitchen cupboards with bleach,
eroding spots of barbecue sauce and rings from sticky jars.
What food did he throw out to make room for yours?
Turning salad dressings, soy sauce,
withered peas embedded in ice.
You liked the idea from breaking from the ordered streets,
too, When Mrs. McArthur told you about the accident,
you felt the tenant's aura, perhaps.
The weight of her words, surely.
But you'd already signed the lease.