[APPLAUSE]
Well, that was an essay.
[LAUGHTER]
How long did it take you to write that?
Not very-- three years.
No, we met in 2006.
So 20, yeah.
No, that's not-- the math is not right.
Yeah.
16?
Yeah.
Wow, that was impressive.
OK.
So, oh, I'm here, OK.
So thank you.
I'm still recovering from that really beautiful essay.
It's an essay.
You should expand that somehow.
No, I'm serious.
It's very well done.
Thank you.
Thanks for coming, and I just want
to thank the Poetry Center, Tyler Meier.
So many people have been a part of my visit.
Diana, of course, Delgado.
Paola-- oh, my goodness--
has been emailing me long before I got here,
and every detail is perfect.
And of course, genius right there.
Gema, Wren, Claire, and I'm sure I've forgotten someone,
but thank you all.
What a great community that you have
to put these types of things together.
Just one reading is so much work,
and every detail that I experienced here
has been really lovely.
I also want to say, I'm really sorry to the community here.
It's something that I don't even have words for,
so I'm still trying to process it along with you.
I get to leave and go home, but this is your community.
You're here, so I'm really sorry for what's happened here,
and I hope that poems can be a part of that process of just
figuring things out, and my heart
goes out to the family and the community.
So I'm just going to read some poems,
and I have a slide show, because I
have been reading online a lot.
And then I'm going to-- there's a book
I'm going to read from that.
Also has some visual aspects, so I thought, well,
maybe just show the slide show.
So you can-- if you're a visual person,
if you can see that far, you can read along or not.
But I'm just going to read from three collections,
and of which I don't have any feelings for at all.
And I'll read from Obit, and I'm going
to read from Dear Memory, and The Trees Witness Everything.
And I'll just set my timer just to make sure that I'm not
reading too short or too long.