Thank you so much for that introduction, Diana.
First off, I want to thank you for organizing this reading.
It's been a really weird season, and I'm
so happy to be able to join folks even digitally
to show off the work that I've done as part of this.
I also want to thank sam sax for selecting my work,
and the University of Arizona Poetry Center
for that affirmation of my work, and all of the support
they've given.
I'm going to open up with one of the poems I applied with,
and this poem is after sam sax.
"Aubade beginning in handcuffs.
Sometimes I pronounce aubade 'obeyed'
for the way this particular desire stumbles the tongue.
Hunger's vocabulary is a fickle thing.
How many lovers have said that they adore me, but meant,
instead, they saw in me a door, a thing to be opened?
Language shifts an image like the light.
To lash can mean both beat and bind.
I'm lashed against the bed by dawn's red blaze.
The whole room, welted tidy by the sky between the blinds.
To cuff can also mean to hold or harm,
each word doubled body and a body's shadow.
And all at once, I flicker beneath me.
I beg you to brew with me, and so exchange faggot for fruit.
Oh, how gentle lust alters the body,
conjugates prey into prayer.
The history of handcuffs is old as myth if memory serves.
The legend goes a Greek hero invented them to steal prophecy
from the mouth of a shapeshifter god,
and the story gathered blood from there.
The root of the word 'religion' is a Latin verb
meaning to bind, as in the worshipper
is bound to their god, two hands paired in steel or prayer.
When I say obey, I mean I've chosen the softer
side of every verb dulled, the sharp edge of a memory
see glass against my tongue.
For the first time, when the handcuffs
steal lips unkiss my wrists, as morning stains every surface,
a fading bruise, I'm already free.
It's the first breath after confession."
Wow.