Thank you, Diana for that very generous introduction.
Thank you to the UA Poetry Center for busting me out
of pandemic jail.
And bringing me in front of real people instead
of these little boxes on my computer screen.
That's so great.
So great to be here.
So I'm a little nervous or something.
And I need to take a breath.
So I'm going to read some poetry tonight from my previous books
because we're at the Poetry Center.
So I'm going to ignore the novels and not do that.
Not refer to them.
About 10 years ago, my father died at age 86.
He was a stone chronic alcoholic for like probably
since he was 19.
And then in his 30s they told him,
if you don't stop drinking alcohol is
going to kill you in 10 years.
But he lived to 86.
So they should have studied his liver.
But they missed their chance.
Anyway.
So as a introduction, this past Father's Day I wrote this piece
and it's about this guy who--
we're talking about shadows and about doubles earlier.
And if you're a male your father is like your double
who goes ahead of you.
Your shadow who moves on ahead of you
in life, whether you like it or not.
Even if you're completely different.
I'm not an alcoholic.
I had to give up drinking beer for various reasons.
And yeah very different.
But nevertheless, your father can lay their fingerprint
on you and it will be lasting for the rest of your life.
So this is a piece called "Father's Day."
My father was an alcoholic who I heard threatening my mother,
"I'll hit you right in the face with this fucking frying pan,"
when I was five.
We played on the side yard with neighbor kids
who heard mom's screams out of the kitchen window.
Dad was also someone who taught me--
who told me he thought Sonny Liston
was going to beat Cassius Clay.
I told him Cassius Clay is going to win because of alliteration.
[LAUGHTER] And he did win.
On the small transistor radio in the garage as
he lowered a rebuilt engine hanging
from a pulley on chains on a tripod into a Dodge Rambler.
His father, my grandfather, working with him together,
dad helped and connected it.
Dad was drunk when he painted, not when he started.
But by the time he finished, mom said,
that's why his paintings look like that.
Dad was the first to tell me about Béla Bartók,
César Vallejo, Mark Rothko, D.T. Suzuki,
living with intensity and art.
But it was mom who fed and clothed us.
And when I lacerated my neck on that stray nail dad
left sticking out of a chinning bar
that he built for himself in the backyard.
It was mom who drove me to town to get
those whatever it was, 30 or 60 or 100 stitches in my neck.
So my fathers were mostly my mom.
The only mother who mothered my six brothers and sisters.
Who once also thought about being an artist
and who was a student when she met Ray, who tried for 10 years
to make that marriage survive while trying
to survive that marriage.
She was as much my father as my dad.
For all his enthusiasms and ideas,
his travels that circumscribed the globe, two other wives,
and a couple of girlfriends, and his suffering an incurable
restlessness.
Mom wasn't just talk.
She got it done.
When she drove the Rambler into the mountains
along the Eel River, looking for dad
at work in the railroad camps.
My fathers were the mountains and the people in the camps.
The cook who gave us leftover birthday cake from the cook car
or the caboose when we had no food in the cabin
bare of everything but blankets on the floor and leftover
tinker toys.
My fathers were the boxcars and a few mean bums
and train tracks where mom picked watercress
from the puddles to feed us and smoke
from the camp we saw drifting like clouds into the trees
that we descended from the past expecting that he
was down there somewhere.
Once when they heard we were hungry,
hunters gave us ducks that they shot.
Once they gave us a giant octopus someone
caught in a big jar.
If we ran out of food, mom sometimes
killed and skinned rabbits in the side yard
or ask neighbors for leftover chicken bones to make soup.
My fathers were random people who
sometimes treated us kindly.
My fathers were the wind that never stopped at Bodega Bay
where dad gave us a bag of wonderful fried minnows
at a store they called [? Day Fish, ?] that
you ate bones fish, fins, head, and all.
And I asked him to get us more but he said,
they didn't have any that day or if I kept asking maybe
he finally admitted that this time he didn't have money.
We went down on the beach there and I was hungry.
And he caught a blue crab in the rocks
and insisted we light a fire in the wind
and try and cook and eat that little crab.
My fathers were the cliffs, bays, and winding highways
of the coast unfurling as far as we
could see in the haze of distance
with a vast horizon over the ocean.
My fathers were streams and rivers roaring over rocks
under the steel span bridges and little towns with wet streets,
sometimes neon shining out of bars while we waited in the car
or in the street.
My fathers were my brother Paul who sometimes
asked if we were twins--
who people sometimes ask if we were
twins who was always beside me.
Paul too was really more my father than Ray
because he shared everything.
My fathers were always hungry.
So I climbed a tree in an orchard
to snatch the small tart apples and touched the electric fence
and fell from the tree.
My fathers were Morgan our dog who we lost along the way.
Ray said, Morgan was living on a ranch,
that he found Morgan a new home somewhere.
But by then I probably no longer believed him.
My fathers were my own fingers then
learning to tie my shoes the right way and maybe
my own shoes too, black and white sneakers I loved to wear.
My fathers were my own thoughts then sitting underneath a chair
where I crept into the room wondering
if they had any idea I was listening
while my parents talked one night.
Maybe they weren't even arguing.
My fathers were the mud and cattails and dust
of wetlands of Los Banos.
Till that day dad smashed all the furniture
in the house, the big radio too, the one
with glass tubes that glowed, and he
broke mom's nose and her hand when she raised it
in front of her face.
And we walked the gravel driveway to the highway.
And I asked where were we going.
And she said, help get the kids in the car with her hand
to her face.