Thank you.
It's wonderful to be here again.
It's wonderful to see the Poetry Center
flourishing, thriving, and poetry
alive, and off the books.
Thank you, Diana.
Thank you, Tyler.
Thank you, Paola.
Especially thank you to the librarians.
Thank you to the docents--
docents.
[LAUGHS]
It's in a foreign language.
[LAUGHTER]
And everybody else, sound people, and booksellers,
and people who clean up, and thank you all,
especially thank you for coming.
I want to begin by reading from a new book,
a new unpublished manuscript called
Fire: Poems Against Pandemic.
I had COVID five times.
The first time was--
you know, that first week, I got it March 6th, 2020
when no one really knew what it was except that you might die.
I woke up in the middle of the night,
and my lungs didn't work.
Wolves' hour, about four in the morning.
And anyway, I survived.
And I wrote a book.
This is the last poem in the book.
I think I'll be reading the first poem and the last poem,
but I'm going to be doing them in an opposite order.
I'll read the last poem of the new manuscript first.
I wrote this poem a couple of weeks ago, September 3rd.
And I'll end with the first poem in the manuscript,
and then I'll be reading from April on Olympia.