WEBVTT

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This next one is, "The Woman
Hanging From The Thirteenth

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Floor Window."

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And I wrote this poem
two or three years

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after I'd gone to Chicago and
gone to the Chicago Indian

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Center.

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And it was a late afternoon
when I went there in winter.

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Winter is no time to be
in Chicago, especially

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to be Indian in Chicago.

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And I remember walking
through that Indian Center

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and it was pretty depressing.

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But what stood out with
me and what haunted me,

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I suppose, for
two or three years

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before I wrote the poem
was this rocking chair.

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It was the only round
thing except for the people

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in that place.

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And so every once in a while,
I would see that rocking chair

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almost right here in the
periphery of my vision.

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And at first, there would be
different people sitting in it,

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an old man rocking his grandson
or a couple of little girls.

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And finally, this one woman
became very insistent.

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She was there for a long time.

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And finally, one afternoon--
and I don't usually

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write poems in the afternoon,
but she said, that's all right,

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and she made me write this poem.

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And the odd thing
about it is, I usually

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do quite a bit of
revision, and this poem,

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I did hardly any revising on.

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And after the poem was
first out and people first

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saw it, they said, you know,
I heard about that story.

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Or, I knew that woman.

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But it was never the same place.

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It was Chicago or New
York or some other city.

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This is called, "The Woman
Hanging From The Thirteenth

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Floor Window."

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She is the woman hanging
from the 13th floor window.

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Her hands are pressed white
against the concrete molding

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of the tenement building.

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She hangs from the 13th
floor window in East Chicago

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with a swirl of
birds over her head.

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They could be a halo or a storm
of glass waiting to crush her.

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She thinks she will be set free.

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The woman hanging from the 13th
floor window on the East side

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of Chicago is not alone.

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She is a woman of children,
of the baby, Carlos,

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and of Margaret, and of
Jimmy, who is the oldest.

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She is her mother's daughter
and her father's son.

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She is several pieces between
the two husbands she has had.

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She is all the women of
the apartment building

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who stand watching her
watching themselves.

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When she was young, she ate
wild rice on scraped down plates

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in warm wood rooms.

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It was in the farther North
and she was the baby then.

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They rocked her.

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She sees Lake Michigan lapping
at the shores of herself.

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It is a dizzy hole of
water, and the rich

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live in tall glass
houses at the edge of it.

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In some places, Lake
Michigan speaks softly.

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Here, it just sputters and butts
itself against the asphalt.

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She sees other buildings
just like hers.

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She sees other women hanging
from many flawed windows,

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counting their lives in
the palms of their hands

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and in the palms of
their children's hands.

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She is the woman hanging
from the 13th floor window

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on the Indian side of town.

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Her belly is soft from
her children's births.

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Her worn Levis swing down below
her waist and then her feet

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and then her heart.

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She is dangling.

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The woman hanging from the
13th floor hears voices,

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they come to her in the night
when the lights have gone dim.

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Sometimes they are little
cats mewing and scratching

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at the door, sometimes they
are her grandmother's voice,

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and sometimes they
are gigantic men

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of light whispering to her to
get up, to get up, to get up.

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That's when she wants
to have another child

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to hold on to in
the night, to be

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able to fall back into dreams.

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And the woman hanging
from the 13th floor window

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hears other voices, some of
them scream out from below

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for her to jump, they
would push her over.

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Others cry softly
from the sidewalks,

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pull their children
up like flowers

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and gather them into their arms.

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They would help her
like themselves.

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But she is the woman hanging
from the 13th floor window

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and she knows she is hanging by
her own fingers, her own skin,

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her own thread of indecision.

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She thinks of Carlos,
of Margaret, of Jimmy.

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She thinks of her father
and of her mother.

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She thinks of all the women
she has been, of all the men.

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She thinks of the color of her
skin and of Chicago streets

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and of waterfalls and pines.

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She thinks of moonlight nights
and of cool spring storms.

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Her mind chatters like
neon and Northside bars.

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She thinks of the
4:00 AM lonelinesses

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that have folded
her up like death,

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discordant, without logical
and beautiful conclusion.

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Her teeth break
off at the edges.

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She would speak.

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The woman hangs from
the 13th floor window,

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crying for the lost
beauty of her own life.

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She sees the sun falling West
over the gray plane of Chicago.

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She thinks she remembers
listening to her own life break

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loose, as she falls
from the 13th floor

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window on the East
side of Chicago,

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or as she climbs back up
to claim herself again.

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[APPLAUSE]

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Thanks.

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And so when I was a kid,
I used to read a lot.

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I would read anything.

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I would steal police
detective magazines

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from under my
stepfather's mattress,

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under his bed, and
short story collections.

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I didn't have any kind
of discrimination.

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And there was one story
that I loved in which--

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it drove me crazy.

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It bothered me for weeks because
the author left you there

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in an arena with this
guy who had to choose

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between a beautiful woman--

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they were behind these doors.

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Behind one door, was
a beautiful woman,

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and behind the other
was a hungry tiger.

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And that just drove me crazy.

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That's where I got
the ending for that.

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