WEBVTT

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Now from the new book.

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I want to dedicate this
reading, besides the poem,

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to my junior high
school homeroom teacher.

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You have homeroom teachers?

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Did you have homeroom teachers?

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Maybe if you're my age.

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I don't know if
they still do that.

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It's a place where
you decompress

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as an adolescent and whatnot.

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In my junior high,
it was a time where

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you could do your homework
because usually your house was

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too chaotic.

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Or there wasn't room or
there wasn't silence,

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and so I was able to do
my homework or anything

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that the homeroom
teacher decided

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they were going to have you do.

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So this is for my
homeroom teacher,

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for Alfonse Lewis, "Brass Band."

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He was also my music teacher.

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"Brass Band" for Alfonse Lewis.

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"Thank you to my
homeroom teacher

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for leaving me for hours under
a tuba too heavy to lift.

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It caged me in my band chair
for making something more

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than music.

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Thank you for your
musical hands,

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my color, for your
stories of women

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too pure to touch, your filth,
for helping her up to her seat.

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Anyway, you a composer,
a Beethoven, but Black.

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Thank you for
getting stuck in that

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in that barrio junior high,
for making the best of us,

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for fighting for
our right to die

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and be buried with the rest.

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For teaching me to question,
for making me keep my head down

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in order to imagine, for
telling me to never mind

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my ragged rolled skirts,
the broken toed shoes

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from Jesus Saves
bins on Thursdays.

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Thank you for leaving
me here to own

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my perpetual late, my too
far ahead, my never going

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to get there, my failure.

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Now remembering your
name, you are forever

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etched in my brass."

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[APPLAUSE]

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