WEBVTT

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Right, not too much more.

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I have a section in this
book called Miniatures

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and they're all
really short poems.

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What they are actually
is, two stanzas

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of three lines each, two
stanzas but they're really

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rhymed quatrains and
they're just disguised

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as two stanza tercets.

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But I think of them as
a little verse snapshots

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so I'm going to
read you a sequence.

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It's called from
the family album.

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And I think of them
as like little photos

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of different family members just
trying to capture a Polaroid

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moment really.

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From the Family Album.

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Grandpa F. Here's what
I know about chicken.

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The sweetest meat
is on the back,

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they say he'd say, back in the
peckish 30s and 40s and prize

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for the family the rest away.

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Uncle B says, everybody's
coming out of doors everywhere.

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Anyone who do that
would have to be stupid.

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90% of those people are dead.

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Time's a torn ticket.

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We're watching home movies.

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Aunt E. One Percocet,
one beer, and she's

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my dear old girl again.

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Never mind the eye that's
blind, rod up her spine,

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kaput gizmo implants
supposed to stem the pain.

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I fold and unfold her walker
for her take her to market.

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Cry we, we all the way home.

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Grandpa S, I told on in 1983
with his spiderweb kitchen

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and funhouse house.

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What I didn't know,
I couldn't say.

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Alone and dying,
what would you do?

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What he did was raise the
roof of his mouth with a 38.

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Uncle X, just kept getting
smaller and smaller.

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Moved from house, to
apartment, to trailer,

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slipped into the
magic hat of himself.

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Disappeared, took years to get
to this mirror this morning.

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And presto, change o,
welcome, home uncle X I'd say

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were I here.

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Aunt M, collected dolls
instead of babies.

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Mothered her
motherless brothers,

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was crazy for the
little swatch of garden

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she scratched from her yard.

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Nursed seeds to shoots,
buds to blossoms, irises

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and black eyed Susans watched
her rockabye her empty arms.

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Child I never knew,
daughter maybe.

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There were two of you
torn like worn filigree

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from the hem of a party dress.

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No one now, she'll wear.

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In the ballroom a young
woman has turned an ankle.

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And what am I supposed to say,
now, now honey, there, there.

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