I think that's the end of the reading, do you?
It's not the end of the reading.
Yeah.
I wanted to read some new ones, and then--
how many?
I think there's 20.
It's tight.
OK, I'm going to read mostly animal poems.
So the animal thing is very strong in my life right now.
They're very sad.
But I will say--
the thing is, if you can just kill animals,
you can just kill anything.
And as we know, people get called animals,
and that means we can just kill them.
So the whole-- you start with the animals.
You treat the animals right, and it just goes on, I think.
And in New York City where I live,
it kills animals like, with great--
I don't know-- aplomb.
Horrendous.
And it's getting worse.
So this is called "Warm Mountains."
"Well, I'm perched over Paris"--
so I'm on a plane.
There's a lot of plane poems here.
"Well, I'm perched over Paris.
I want to say hello.
The camera on the plane pulls back,
and now it's looking on the ocean, and then
a list of names.
The Pyrenees are dangling down there.
Only on a map are mountains flat.
I like mountains because they remind me of history,
the world getting poured.
A mountain is a kind of splash, ocean's residue.
And I can rise to the plight of the fish.
More are killed than anything.
I don't know what to do with the endlessness of my feelings.
I'm the last one on Earth thinking about Orchard.
A cruel name for a small dog found in the streets
of an unkind city.
A dog of no gender--
blue, gray, slightly red.
And when he was captured by the city for no purpose
except this small dog should go there,
he was so appalled and confused by this hard sell he
found himself in, he peed and pooped on the floor.
He's scared, I cried, thinking that would bring him some love.
And he needed someone to fill out forms, to walk in the door
and bring little Orchard home, but he's dead.
In a city, a small dog that no one wants
gets a needle in his heart.
It stops-- maybe not right away--
but he's tossed in a bag, brought to a crematorium
on Long Island that has a blazing fire full of cats
and dogs.
The city pays them so much to do this terrible burning,
that some dogs like Orchard are covering a debt.
Orchard was just weight, like the slight addition
of his death helped somebody out in keeping the figures in line.
The payment must have a purpose.
The further from the dogs, the emptier the line--
it all being kept on a computer somewhere that
gets erased from time to time because
of the cheapness of this story.
A dog got a pretty name, but no hands
come for his warm, pretty shoulder.
I've made him a boy with colors in his fur and light
in his eyes, and he would run."
[APPLAUSE]
Thanks.