I don't have any stories about most of my poems, by the way.
[LAUGHS] I could lie.
That can be entertaining.
This poem happened to me--
no.
[LAUGHTER]
This poem is called "River's Story."
"There was a boy named River who got up one
day on the right side of bed.
So he ran up to the lake and said, excuse,
have I lost my way?
Lake did not speak English.
River stood there with his pants down,
pissing right into the lake.
Lake didn't even care.
Lake is still Lake, River's still River.
The next day, River got up on the wrong side of bed.
River leapt up, reaching around to snap his spine.
That felt good.
Now, watch this.
Through the forest and a wild chase for life,
stops at an unlikely cabin, gets his hide tanned
for waking the lazy minister.
And also, the visiting coal man delivered several exasperating
punches beneath the child's proud ear ring.
The world can be a crooked and crazy place
for a boy named River.
A girl named Veronica Lake had it really good for a while.
Then it got progressively worse, until they
had to dredge her main.
They were attempting to actually measure her depth
with hooks the size of a giant, an aberrant of, say, 12
stories.
But River's story was just a teardrop, a dewdrop,
the size of Chicago and all its vast prairie of concrete."
That's why I get very nervous when
people say all your work is very autobiographical, you know?
[LAUGHTER]