WEBVTT

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For those of you who haven't
read Cruelty or maybe not even

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Killing Floor,
this next poem I'm

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going to read this
more like the old Ai.

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Not that this is the new Ai,
but there's certain parts of me

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that seem new at times.

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This is called "The
Mother's Tale."

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"Once when I was
young, Juanito, there

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was a ballroom in Lima
where Hernán, your father,

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danced with another woman and
I cut him across the cheek

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with a pocket knife.

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Oh, the pitch of
the music sometimes,

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the smoke and
rustle of crinoline.

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But what things to remember
now on your wedding day.

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I put a kettle of hot
water into the wooden tub

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where you are sitting.

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I was young, free,
but Juanito, how

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free is a woman born with
Eve's sin between her legs.

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And inside her, Lucifer sits
on a throne of abalone shells.

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His staff with the head of John
the Baptist skewered on it.

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And in judgment,
son, in judgment,

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he says that women will bear
the fruit of the tree we

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wish so much to eat.

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And that fruit will devour
us generation by generation.

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So, my son, you must
beat Rosita often.

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She must know the weight of a
man's hand, the bruises that

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are like the wounds of Christ.

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Her blood that is
black at the heart

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must flow until it is
as red and pure as his.

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And she must be pregnant always.

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If not with child, then
with the knowledge that she

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is alive because of you, that
you can take her life more

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easily than she creates
it, that suffering

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is her inheritance from
you and through you

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from Christ who walked
on his mother's body

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to be the king of heaven."

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[APPLAUSE]

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I sent that to--

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Ms. wanted some poems
for anniversary--

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for anniversary issue, right?

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But the editor
wrote back and said,

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sorry, I will take
the other one.

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We've got to stay
away from religion.

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So there are things apparently
that Ms. cannot deal with,

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you know, apparently.

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They took another one.