I think I'll read you one more short one.
And then I'll try to be jolly with the chapter.
This is a poem to my mom.
I think when you're young, and you
want to be some badass young writer and stuff.
And it's so unhip to write things for your mom,
and then you realize way too late
that your mother was the superhero of the whole story.
Those of you who see me at the conference
know I've been writing an epic novel about my mother's World
War II service, and it's coming out next October.
Yeah, yeah, I don't know if I'll come back, I'll be on my yacht,
but no, it's looking good.
It's called, Goodnight Irene.
But this is a little bit about my mother
and our life in the Barrio.
My dad had other things to do.
And he would go out, and she was terrified of the neighborhood
and wouldn't go outside at night and 4th of July rolled around,
and we couldn't go see fireworks.
And this is the poem, I remember this night all the time.
And then I promise we'll cheer up,
so Darling Phyl, July, fireworks tonight, the new life, I
remember now, that other life.
The life below those tenement years on our dead alley
and papa gone out to visit bowling alley waitresses,
again.
Mother too scared of pachucos, and winos, and gang fighters,
and Black people to go into the dark to that shell town park
to watch the rockets.
Papa had the '49 Ford, though mom couldn't drive it,
didn't matter.
10 feet.
So what?
What were we going to do, anyway?
We're going to jump on the junkie bus
and ride it one mile through the concrete night?
10:00 o'clock and ma wrapped us in blankets
to keep mosquitoes off, and we snuck
through the buildings to the outside stairwell
to the landlord's place, and we climbed halfway up.
Cement landing is cool as grass anyway,
and we ate ketchup sandwiches.
She, a step above me, head thrown back,
eyes up to the sky searching seeing
dead ancestors, dead friends, seeing the mysterious man who
sent letters she kept hidden in her drawer.
He called her darling Phyl.
Fireworks, but this is the real world.
It's almost funny, we couldn't see a single firework.
All we saw was the ghost plumes of the smoke angling away.
We heard thunder, we saw the color
of the bombs lighting the smoke from underneath reflecting
the color.
Oh, the color.
It lit the sky, and Phyllis dark as sorrow against it.
The color, man.
It seemed almost beautiful.
That's me mom.
[CLAPPING]