WEBVTT

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We're OK.

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I've got to watch the time.

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This is a longer poem.

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And I thought it was appropriate
since we're having the--

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we're having the
signups outside.

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It's called "Codex Luna."

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And this is just to
give you some background

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because people often want to
know where do poems come from?

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And they come from
different places.

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Obviously, if I see a
spiderweb on a morning glory,

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it's going to be a Haiku.

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It's not going to be a
book length poem probably.

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But when I was a kid,
my dad had a green card.

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My mom as you
heard was American.

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And we ended up-- we left
Tijuana and we ended up living

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in this neighborhood called
Clairemont in San Diego.

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And a little middle class,
working class neighborhood.

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And a lot of-- how do
I put this delicately?

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A lot of my relatives were maybe
not necessarily documented.

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And my father was
old school Mexican.

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Some of you will
know what this means.

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It means he had "families,"
plural, along with mine.

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And so I had siblings.

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And they were using our
mailbox for their address

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to receive mail.

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And I didn't get it.

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I was, like, I've been
getting like 50 letters here.

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It's everybody we ever knew.

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And my brother was
married to a woman.

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They were later-- the basis
of the main characters

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in House of Broken Angels.

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And she had a sister who
would come across undocumented

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and was heading to Los
Angeles to be a maid.

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I was a boy scout.

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And I had been at a campout.

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And I came home, and
there were my brother

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and my sister-in-law.

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And I was flipping out.

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This was so cool.

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They hadn't told me that this
young woman-- she was 13--

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was asleep in my bed.

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And I went back in my bedroom.

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And you can imagine me
in my boy scout shorts

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this creature sleep in my bed.

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And so there was this
whole kind of relationship

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with me and her asleep not
figuring out, what do I do?

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I don't know what to do.

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And she woke up
and then this poem

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came from the aftermath of
that when they took her north.

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And that night when
I went to sleep,

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everything smelled of
her perfume on my pillow.

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I had never had a woman's
perfume or a girl's perfume

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on my pillow.

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And it was just this
incredible thing.

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And she went through some
terrible difficult times.

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So that inspired this poem.

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And she died a
couple of years ago.

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And I've always remembered her.

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So that inspired this along with
the plights of so many people

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that I have written
about so many times.

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It's called "Codex Luna."

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"My moon pulled a different
darkness across the sky.

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My unknown sisters tucked in
the barbed embrace of the border

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fence saw a different
face in the moon.

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Theirs was Luna Tochtli, the
rabbit moon, moon of running,

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fear, and hiding.

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My bed was soft.

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Their beds were stone.

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My moon was origami floating in
a water cup, a Japanese artwork

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of rice paper and pearls, a
light to dream of girlfriends.

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Their moon peeled a panicked
eye, goggled blind as they ran.

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Headlights froze them, twin
moon beams ran them down.

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Tufts of their dreams tangled in
thickets of border tumbleweeds.

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My sisters brought undocumented
scents to sweeten the valleys.

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Their perfume
settled on roadsides

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misted over bloodstain,
rattlesnake, boot print, guard

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dog, flashlight, illegal
exhalations, unlawful breathing

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tainted with cinnamon,
coffee filling

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cries like sugar in the
bellies of honeysuckle.

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Underarm sweat from running.

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Belly sweat, back of the neck
sweat, small of the back sweat,

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shoulder blade
sweat, brow sweat.

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Behind them, hunger,
before them, night.

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Tang of terror
under their skirts.

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Smell of hope burning like
mustard blossoms in the caves.

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Burning stink of running.

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Death smells of
squatting where they

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hope no one could see them.

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Black soap, fresh hair
flagged in the wire.

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Sun smell of clothes
once hung in the wind,

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heavy hopeless breast
milk smell, smell

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of Morelos gardens in bloom,
burning stink of running.

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Two.

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I did not need to run.

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I had a paper moon
stamped and certified.

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Mine was a colonia moon, a
barrio moon, a suburban moon.

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I knew where I was, where
I was supposed to be,

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where I was allowed to go.

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And that was anywhere.

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We lived the outhouse moon, the
tortilla moon, the channel 12

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bullfight Tijuana moon.

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And then we migrated north like
monarchs following the light.

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And my moon was a boy
scout moon, a campout moon,

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a drive in triple feature moon.

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My moon remained poor as a
rusted coin in a frozen pond

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but documented.

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The green men in the trucks
could read my belonging

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by this moon's light,
gave us the all clear

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to walk, work, die on ground
our ancestors had forgotten.

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Let us don bat patrol patches
and troop to 60 uniforms,

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hike the ridgelines
where the Mexica had

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taken Huitzilopochtli
in their arms and begun

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their 100 year
walk to the south.

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My moon rose over tidy houses.

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Three-- she ran.

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She ran all her life.

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She ran to stay ahead
of charging darkness,

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galloping hunger.

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She ran west to el poniente,
north toward winter

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and Mictlán, land of the dead.

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Worked the light of the
moon in her small hands,

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the color of Earth.

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She molded moonglow
into trinkets

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traded for coins, the color of
sun, wove moon into bracelets.

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She traded for perfume.

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Worked the ceremonial
motel chambers,

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swept the floors of the moneyed,
folded bloody sheets and knelt

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at toilets scrubbing sins of
the mighty from the seats.

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She was 13.

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Mactlacti ihuan yei.

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I was 10.

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Mactlacti.

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Somehow, she came
to rest in my house.

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Trucks could not
track her for an hour.

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Dogs could not follow her scent.

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She was on that invisible
railroad to Los Angeles,

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enemy city of the great
walled city of Tijuanatlán.

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I was in the invisible
mountains of Cuyamaca,

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walking in the ghost
footprints of vanished hunters

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in their tribes wondering
where their arrows went.

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And she slept in my
bed, too tired to eat,

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too tired to join in the
gathered laughter of my living

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room.

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She slept in my bed.

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She lay in my sheets,
smelling the odor

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of Thunderbird and America.

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And her eyes pulled
themselves, closed to protect

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her dreams of home.

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Four-- and I came in.

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And I found her.

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I came in and found her.

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Is there any other story?

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Any other legend to tell?

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I came home, I
found her, her head

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on my pillow, the first woman
to ever sleep in my bed.

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Her hair black across my pillow
spilling toward the Earth,

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reaching for the heart of
Ce Anáhuac, the One World.

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Her eyebrows shallow as streams
fringed in cress and licorice

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in Cuyamaca shadows.

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Her brown brow unlined.

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One hand, fingers curled,
nails pale small shells

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against the Chichimeca
shores of her skin.

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Her breath making small
melodies of breezes and tides.

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And me holding my breath.

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The thrum and sigh,
thrum and sigh,

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thrum and sigh of her sleep.

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Then they woke her.

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She didn't want to wake.

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She didn't want to rise.

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She didn't want to go.

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I didn't want them to wake her.

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I wanted her to sleep beside me.

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I didn't know anything
else that men wanted

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to happen in bed with a woman.

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I wanted to sleep beside her.

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I did not know the
language of beds.

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I wanted to pass through
the door of her color.

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I wanted to pray in
her temple of hair.

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She knew more than I
did about this language.

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She blushed when she
saw me at worship.

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I wanted to pray.

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I blushed, discovered
it in my wanting.

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We touched hands.

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Hello.

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We touched hands.

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Adios.

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Then they tucked her in
the back seat of a 64 car,

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smuggled her under blankets
through trucks up freeways

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laden with runners
north where she'd

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bask in the light of
a thousand toilets,

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where her nails would break on
porcelain, where she'd sweep

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more sheets off more beds where
she could not afford to sleep,

00:10:40.460 --> 00:10:43.700 align:middle line:84%
where helicopters searched
her alleys with burning eyes

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all night, where she
could speak to no one

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and no one could speak to her
except to give her orders.

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Girly, get your ass over
here and wipe this up.

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You come when I
tell you to come.

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And you do it now.

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Have papers?

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You like this.

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You do, don't you?

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You like this.

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I'll teach you a little
something right here right now.

00:11:08.280 --> 00:11:13.220 align:middle line:84%
That night I lay in her
outline in my sheets.

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She was hot as a
sunburn on my skin.

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I sank my face into
the imprint of hers.

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Her perfume crept
from the pillow.

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The smell of her memories.

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I smelled her
mother in a kitchen

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with clay pots and cilantro.

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It was all there.

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It is still there.

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Hibiscus tea.

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A river, a handful
of shampoo falling

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to a drain like
melting snowdrifts.

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First grade, the
Mexican national anthem,

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the snap of the flag,
chalk dust sneezes,

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smell of library paste,
village church, incense,

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the crack of unopened bibles,
laundry day, the boiling,

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tamales, day, and the aunts
with their crow voice laughter.

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The meat, the masa, the raisins,
the cinnamon, morning glory

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vines all tangled through
cheap Tijuana perfume.

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