WEBVTT

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I think I'll read you
one more short one.

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And then I'll try to be
jolly with the chapter.

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This is a poem to my mom.

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I think when you're
young, and you

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want to be some badass
young writer and stuff.

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And it's so unhip to
write things for your mom,

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and then you
realize way too late

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that your mother was the
superhero of the whole story.

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Those of you who see
me at the conference

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know I've been writing an epic
novel about my mother's World

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War II service, and it's
coming out next October.

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Yeah, yeah, I don't know if I'll
come back, I'll be on my yacht,

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but no, it's looking good.

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It's called, Goodnight Irene.

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But this is a little
bit about my mother

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and our life in the Barrio.

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My dad had other things to do.

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And he would go out, and she was
terrified of the neighborhood

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and wouldn't go outside at night
and 4th of July rolled around,

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and we couldn't
go see fireworks.

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And this is the poem, I remember
this night all the time.

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And then I promise
we'll cheer up,

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so Darling Phyl, July, fireworks
tonight, the new life, I

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remember now, that other life.

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The life below those tenement
years on our dead alley

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and papa gone out to visit
bowling alley waitresses,

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again.

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Mother too scared of pachucos,
and winos, and gang fighters,

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and Black people to go into the
dark to that shell town park

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to watch the rockets.

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Papa had the '49 Ford,
though mom couldn't drive it,

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didn't matter.

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10 feet.

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So what?

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What were we going
to do, anyway?

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We're going to jump
on the junkie bus

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and ride it one mile
through the concrete night?

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10:00 o'clock and ma
wrapped us in blankets

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to keep mosquitoes
off, and we snuck

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through the buildings
to the outside stairwell

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to the landlord's place,
and we climbed halfway up.

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Cement landing is
cool as grass anyway,

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and we ate ketchup sandwiches.

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She, a step above
me, head thrown back,

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eyes up to the sky
searching seeing

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dead ancestors, dead friends,
seeing the mysterious man who

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sent letters she kept
hidden in her drawer.

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He called her darling Phyl.

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Fireworks, but this
is the real world.

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It's almost funny, we couldn't
see a single firework.

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All we saw was the ghost plumes
of the smoke angling away.

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We heard thunder,
we saw the color

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of the bombs lighting the smoke
from underneath reflecting

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the color.

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Oh, the color.

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It lit the sky, and Phyllis
dark as sorrow against it.

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The color, man.

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It seemed almost beautiful.

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That's me mom.

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[CLAPPING]

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