WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.030 align:middle line:84% They want to share that's not about yourself, that's OK too. 00:00:03.030 --> 00:00:06.300 align:middle line:84% We'd like to print one more newsletter before the year is 00:00:06.300 --> 00:00:09.210 align:middle line:90% up and we still need some news. 00:00:09.210 --> 00:00:12.720 align:middle line:84% So if you'll give us a call tomorrow and no later 00:00:12.720 --> 00:00:15.120 align:middle line:84% than Monday, we want to get everything 00:00:15.120 --> 00:00:18.070 align:middle line:84% turned into the printers Monday afternoon. 00:00:18.070 --> 00:00:23.128 align:middle line:84% So we accept only good news, so please give us a call. 00:00:23.128 --> 00:00:25.170 align:middle line:84% If there's something you want to share that's not 00:00:25.170 --> 00:00:26.717 align:middle line:90% about yourself, that's OK too. 00:00:26.717 --> 00:00:29.657 align:middle line:90% 00:00:29.657 --> 00:00:31.240 align:middle line:84% I hope you can all come over the union 00:00:31.240 --> 00:00:33.220 align:middle line:84% to meet Roger Weingarten tonight. 00:00:33.220 --> 00:00:37.120 align:middle line:84% We'll be in the terrace lounge as usual. 00:00:37.120 --> 00:00:39.670 align:middle line:84% Roger's come to us from Arizona State University, 00:00:39.670 --> 00:00:43.510 align:middle line:84% where he's the director of the creative writing program. 00:00:43.510 --> 00:00:48.310 align:middle line:84% He's also taught at Western Michigan University earlier. 00:00:48.310 --> 00:00:51.010 align:middle line:84% His most recent works are "What are 00:00:51.010 --> 00:00:54.520 align:middle line:84% Birds Worth" from Cummington Press, 00:00:54.520 --> 00:00:57.515 align:middle line:84% "Ethan Benjamin Boldt" from Knopf, 00:00:57.515 --> 00:01:01.690 align:middle line:84% and forthcoming in the fall, "The Vermont Suicides," 00:01:01.690 --> 00:01:05.370 align:middle line:90% also from Knopf. 00:01:05.370 --> 00:01:08.760 align:middle line:84% He's been a winner of National Endowment for the Arts grants, 00:01:08.760 --> 00:01:11.250 align:middle line:84% Vermont Council for the Arts Grant, 00:01:11.250 --> 00:01:13.500 align:middle line:84% his work has been given special selection 00:01:13.500 --> 00:01:16.350 align:middle line:84% by the Associated Writing Program-- 00:01:16.350 --> 00:01:19.150 align:middle line:84% The Vermont Suicides which I mentioned earlier. 00:01:19.150 --> 00:01:23.661 align:middle line:84% We're very happy to welcome him tonight. Mr. Roger Weingarten. 00:01:23.661 --> 00:01:36.170 align:middle line:90% [CLAPPING] 00:01:36.170 --> 00:01:36.670 align:middle line:90% Hello. 00:01:36.670 --> 00:01:43.930 align:middle line:90% 00:01:43.930 --> 00:01:45.400 align:middle line:90% Can you hear me back there? 00:01:45.400 --> 00:01:47.652 align:middle line:90% 00:01:47.652 --> 00:01:50.110 align:middle line:84% Well, I'm going to do something a little different tonight, 00:01:50.110 --> 00:01:52.420 align:middle line:84% I think than you've had happen here before. 00:01:52.420 --> 00:01:53.620 align:middle line:90% I'm going to read one poem. 00:01:53.620 --> 00:02:04.960 align:middle line:90% 00:02:04.960 --> 00:02:09.550 align:middle line:84% It's in sections, as short poems like this 00:02:09.550 --> 00:02:15.070 align:middle line:84% usually are. It's called "The Tale of the Green Rose." 00:02:15.070 --> 00:02:16.250 align:middle line:90% Jon, can you hear me? 00:02:16.250 --> 00:02:16.750 align:middle line:90% OK. 00:02:16.750 --> 00:02:21.680 align:middle line:90% 00:02:21.680 --> 00:02:26.000 align:middle line:84% It's the last poem in The Vermont Suicides, which 00:02:26.000 --> 00:02:27.860 align:middle line:84% isn't a particularly happy title for a book 00:02:27.860 --> 00:02:34.760 align:middle line:84% but it's not the most depressing book I've read or written. 00:02:34.760 --> 00:02:38.660 align:middle line:84% Anyway, I'm just going to try and read this to you, 00:02:38.660 --> 00:02:40.640 align:middle line:84% after Steve Orlen sharply criticized me 00:02:40.640 --> 00:02:46.340 align:middle line:84% for my reading habits, and see if we can try a new way. 00:02:46.340 --> 00:02:51.320 align:middle line:84% Anyway, this poem mostly takes place in Vermont, a shade of it 00:02:51.320 --> 00:02:54.365 align:middle line:90% takes place in Southern Quebec. 00:02:54.365 --> 00:02:56.493 align:middle line:90% 00:02:56.493 --> 00:02:58.160 align:middle line:84% And I think that's all you need to know. 00:02:58.160 --> 00:03:03.050 align:middle line:84% It's mostly about a courtship, about triangulation 00:03:03.050 --> 00:03:10.400 align:middle line:84% of relationships and new love of courtship, friends, 00:03:10.400 --> 00:03:13.758 align:middle line:90% those sorts of things. 00:03:13.758 --> 00:03:15.800 align:middle line:84% The first section of the Tale of the Green Rose-- 00:03:15.800 --> 00:03:17.550 align:middle line:90% come on in, sit down. 00:03:17.550 --> 00:03:22.260 align:middle line:90% 00:03:22.260 --> 00:03:27.630 align:middle line:84% It's called Will of the Wisp in the Northeast Kingdom. 00:03:27.630 --> 00:03:31.620 align:middle line:84% The Northeast Kingdom is the name of the Northeast section 00:03:31.620 --> 00:03:37.290 align:middle line:84% of Vermont and I think it's the nicest area but the least 00:03:37.290 --> 00:03:44.160 align:middle line:84% touristy, the poorest, and you get the feeling living there, 00:03:44.160 --> 00:03:47.880 align:middle line:84% as I had up to a year and a half ago, 00:03:47.880 --> 00:03:50.890 align:middle line:84% that you're living in the 19th century. 00:03:50.890 --> 00:03:55.410 align:middle line:84% And I think in a lot of ways, most of Vermont still is. 00:03:55.410 --> 00:03:59.000 align:middle line:84% Many of you haven't been there maybe 00:03:59.000 --> 00:04:01.500 align:middle line:84% you want to get there someday anyway and get a sense of that 00:04:01.500 --> 00:04:03.870 align:middle line:84% before the new freeways totally wash that away. 00:04:03.870 --> 00:04:06.510 align:middle line:90% 00:04:06.510 --> 00:04:08.265 align:middle line:84% Will of the Wisp in the Northeast Kingdom. 00:04:08.265 --> 00:04:11.230 align:middle line:90% 00:04:11.230 --> 00:04:15.040 align:middle line:84% The young doe in the clearing, the buff colored mark 00:04:15.040 --> 00:04:19.240 align:middle line:84% of her chin, in her small M-shaped humid 00:04:19.240 --> 00:04:24.100 align:middle line:84% and black nostrils, bruised the night soil. 00:04:24.100 --> 00:04:25.960 align:middle line:84% Through her teeth that grind the kelp 00:04:25.960 --> 00:04:30.130 align:middle line:84% blooded vetch, hemlock bark, and the white rooted memory 00:04:30.130 --> 00:04:31.720 align:middle line:90% of winter. 00:04:31.720 --> 00:04:36.460 align:middle line:84% There is the huffing communal whisper of the herd, 00:04:36.460 --> 00:04:41.080 align:middle line:84% the buck and fawn still among the raspberries, 00:04:41.080 --> 00:04:47.050 align:middle line:84% nosing into a slender bouquet of hawthorn and Yankee paintbrush. 00:04:47.050 --> 00:04:51.280 align:middle line:84% Those blood spools drying in every syllable that 00:04:51.280 --> 00:04:54.220 align:middle line:90% steps out of the carriage. 00:04:54.220 --> 00:04:59.260 align:middle line:84% As I, like Renoir, a choirboy concealed 00:04:59.260 --> 00:05:03.820 align:middle line:84% behind the great organ alone with his voice and one 00:05:03.820 --> 00:05:07.420 align:middle line:84% with anyone there in the small light, 00:05:07.420 --> 00:05:11.200 align:middle line:84% Transplant behind a typewriter, the margins 00:05:11.200 --> 00:05:15.670 align:middle line:84% of four lights on a raised double hung window. 00:05:15.670 --> 00:05:19.510 align:middle line:84% Above the silver pines, knotted into shag 00:05:19.510 --> 00:05:22.750 align:middle line:84% against a dark exclamation of balsam. 00:05:22.750 --> 00:05:25.420 align:middle line:90% 00:05:25.420 --> 00:05:30.460 align:middle line:84% A porcupine dining alone bites into the oak and pane 00:05:30.460 --> 00:05:37.270 align:middle line:84% apothecary door, unhinged by Pasini Demolition and Salvage, 00:05:37.270 --> 00:05:42.220 align:middle line:84% and a woodcock hen, leaving her eggs for a tug of war, 00:05:42.220 --> 00:05:46.870 align:middle line:84% and nightcrawler, and the limitless undertow of her beak, 00:05:46.870 --> 00:05:50.680 align:middle line:84% weave a fisherman's sorry net of echoes 00:05:50.680 --> 00:05:53.230 align:middle line:84% around the white throated sparrow 00:05:53.230 --> 00:05:57.850 align:middle line:84% song, that sweeps this valley under porch light 00:05:57.850 --> 00:06:02.575 align:middle line:84% as if they were points of light in a lagoon. 00:06:02.575 --> 00:06:06.798 align:middle line:90% 00:06:06.798 --> 00:06:07.340 align:middle line:90% The amaranth. 00:06:07.340 --> 00:06:12.210 align:middle line:90% 00:06:12.210 --> 00:06:17.580 align:middle line:84% The amaranth in cobalt sun climbs to elms, like a jugular. 00:06:17.580 --> 00:06:23.370 align:middle line:84% Like a juggler, waving sticks in a ball over a dream. 00:06:23.370 --> 00:06:27.720 align:middle line:84% In the pond of beaver, slaps and dives circling around 00:06:27.720 --> 00:06:31.110 align:middle line:84% the olive green two legged pot, out 00:06:31.110 --> 00:06:34.530 align:middle line:84% of which a shimmery work shirt, an 8 o'clock 00:06:34.530 --> 00:06:40.530 align:middle line:84% shadow, and a finely etched chimney of a nose. 00:06:40.530 --> 00:06:44.700 align:middle line:84% Pardon me, and a finely etched chimney exhale smoke. 00:06:44.700 --> 00:06:49.410 align:middle line:84% Low silhouette of a mud and stick island or tee pee 00:06:49.410 --> 00:06:54.240 align:middle line:84% with a ghost of white cedar for a center pole. 00:06:54.240 --> 00:06:58.140 align:middle line:84% At the periphery, I'm straddling a fallen elm 00:06:58.140 --> 00:07:02.160 align:middle line:84% while a blue heron eclipses the sun, becoming 00:07:02.160 --> 00:07:06.060 align:middle line:84% pterodactyl above the copper bald crown 00:07:06.060 --> 00:07:10.410 align:middle line:84% the fisherman claims is an erotic land airstrip-- 00:07:10.410 --> 00:07:14.130 align:middle line:84% brown and blue feathered over the marsh 00:07:14.130 --> 00:07:17.730 align:middle line:84% of this dream of former pleasures, friendship, 00:07:17.730 --> 00:07:22.560 align:middle line:84% and neighbors: the exhibitionist, beaver trapped, 00:07:22.560 --> 00:07:23.850 align:middle line:90% and Barry, 00:07:23.850 --> 00:07:27.330 align:middle line:84% deep rooted in the sunset, his torso 00:07:27.330 --> 00:07:31.050 align:middle line:84% confused with the reflection of lilies 00:07:31.050 --> 00:07:34.950 align:middle line:84% that drew a bridge of bodies from the old world 00:07:34.950 --> 00:07:38.310 align:middle line:84% to the new and swam under it to teach 00:07:38.310 --> 00:07:40.590 align:middle line:90% in an experimental school. 00:07:40.590 --> 00:07:45.930 align:middle line:84% Walking his creel in a stringer of rainbows back to his porch, 00:07:45.930 --> 00:07:49.590 align:middle line:84% where a certified letter fabricated how he could 00:07:49.590 --> 00:07:52.530 align:middle line:90% be laid off after 12 years. 00:07:52.530 --> 00:07:57.270 align:middle line:84% Even though I, less seasoned, would not comprehend it. 00:07:57.270 --> 00:08:06.340 align:middle line:90% 00:08:06.340 --> 00:08:09.550 align:middle line:84% I climb the ladder down out of the sleeping loft 00:08:09.550 --> 00:08:13.150 align:middle line:84% and call to the life at her desk. 00:08:13.150 --> 00:08:17.110 align:middle line:84% Who overcomes loss: of our love affair, 00:08:17.110 --> 00:08:21.010 align:middle line:84% her marriage partner executing chin-ups in and out 00:08:21.010 --> 00:08:25.120 align:middle line:84% of the closet or almost everything painful. 00:08:25.120 --> 00:08:28.420 align:middle line:84% Who drives over for a walk on the sponge cake 00:08:28.420 --> 00:08:32.049 align:middle line:84% earth of the checkering bog, who insists 00:08:32.049 --> 00:08:37.179 align:middle line:84% that I don't have the strength to separate those two. 00:08:37.179 --> 00:08:40.690 align:middle line:84% Take her bowling, for a beer at the Thrush. 00:08:40.690 --> 00:08:42.850 align:middle line:84% What really counts is your evening 00:08:42.850 --> 00:08:48.100 align:middle line:84% with my best female friend imported from a Middle Eastern 00:08:48.100 --> 00:08:52.060 align:middle line:90% bedroom town on the Hudson. 00:08:52.060 --> 00:08:55.360 align:middle line:84% Sliding her forefinger and her pink thumbnail 00:08:55.360 --> 00:08:57.940 align:middle line:84% around the side of my scrotum, she 00:08:57.940 --> 00:09:01.600 align:middle line:84% tells me that the boys who wear the rubbery faces 00:09:01.600 --> 00:09:04.480 align:middle line:84% of men whose job is killing still 00:09:04.480 --> 00:09:09.820 align:middle line:84% masturbate with the memory of Marilyn Monroe in folded linen 00:09:09.820 --> 00:09:11.710 align:middle line:90% from the Waldorf. 00:09:11.710 --> 00:09:16.060 align:middle line:84% But she wonders if I could arrange passage 00:09:16.060 --> 00:09:19.690 align:middle line:84% to the Bay of Fundy with a railroad tycoon 00:09:19.690 --> 00:09:25.870 align:middle line:84% and patron of the literary arts for her folding bed 00:09:25.870 --> 00:09:27.595 align:middle line:90% her husband and cow. 00:09:27.595 --> 00:09:33.630 align:middle line:90% 00:09:33.630 --> 00:09:36.960 align:middle line:84% Between a low cedar hedge and the river birch 00:09:36.960 --> 00:09:40.650 align:middle line:84% that skirts the rocky twist in the Winooski, 00:09:40.650 --> 00:09:46.650 align:middle line:84% we face each other on our sides, earlier with a tractor, winch, 00:09:46.650 --> 00:09:50.010 align:middle line:84% and a hand from Walter Smith's Guinea hens, 00:09:50.010 --> 00:09:55.950 align:middle line:84% geese, ex-cons and sophomores, Duncan Mitchell intuitive engineer 00:09:55.950 --> 00:10:02.760 align:middle line:84% tugged the fallen galvanized silo cap up onto the hay wagon 00:10:02.760 --> 00:10:07.380 align:middle line:84% painted US PLAINFIELD in black letters on both sides 00:10:07.380 --> 00:10:12.240 align:middle line:84% engraved with dried rural life and dead cocoons 00:10:12.240 --> 00:10:15.900 align:middle line:90% whitewashed in chicken shit. 00:10:15.900 --> 00:10:18.840 align:middle line:84% With a pitchfork chained to his back, 00:10:18.840 --> 00:10:22.020 align:middle line:84% the silver lynx illuminated in the sun. 00:10:22.020 --> 00:10:26.520 align:middle line:84% The prongs fanning out over his mossy profile. 00:10:26.520 --> 00:10:31.260 align:middle line:84% He took the wheel like Polynesian royalty 00:10:31.260 --> 00:10:34.810 align:middle line:84% into a float, through the locally famous 4th 00:10:34.810 --> 00:10:35.955 align:middle line:90% of July parade. 00:10:35.955 --> 00:10:39.600 align:middle line:90% 00:10:39.600 --> 00:10:41.160 align:middle line:90% She would be there. 00:10:41.160 --> 00:10:45.060 align:middle line:84% I would strut by and say a little more than hello 00:10:45.060 --> 00:10:50.100 align:middle line:84% with my eyes, my heart reaching into the coffin of my throat, 00:10:50.100 --> 00:10:54.450 align:middle line:84% sporting male colors of violet shirt, 00:10:54.450 --> 00:10:58.860 align:middle line:84% a wide cowhide with a tarnished round brass buckle, 00:10:58.860 --> 00:11:04.380 align:middle line:84% and dungarees, blue, and fading into the swarm. 00:11:04.380 --> 00:11:09.360 align:middle line:84% She is guarded on the left by a bald short Albanian 00:11:09.360 --> 00:11:14.910 align:middle line:84% with a full charcoal beard that curls like his memory for names 00:11:14.910 --> 00:11:19.080 align:middle line:84% and faces loyal to the bones of the man 00:11:19.080 --> 00:11:23.280 align:middle line:84% Deborah lived with and loved for a third of her life. 00:11:23.280 --> 00:11:27.135 align:middle line:84% And Catherine to her right would arrange to be there. 00:11:27.135 --> 00:11:30.510 align:middle line:90% 00:11:30.510 --> 00:11:34.830 align:middle line:84% When Tom returned to a nearly bare clapboard house 00:11:34.830 --> 00:11:39.630 align:middle line:84% on his black and silver Kawasaki, 00:11:39.630 --> 00:11:44.020 align:middle line:84% Deborah, to escape their claustrophobic hold, 00:11:44.020 --> 00:11:48.000 align:middle line:84% takes Duncan's hand as it pulls her onto the float. 00:11:48.000 --> 00:11:53.790 align:middle line:84% So everyone up from Yonkers, Marblehead and down the road 00:11:53.790 --> 00:11:57.060 align:middle line:84% could see the ordinary joy of new love 00:11:57.060 --> 00:12:01.410 align:middle line:84% kicking its bare heel in her eyes. 00:12:01.410 --> 00:12:06.420 align:middle line:84% We ran into each other near the fairground stalls 00:12:06.420 --> 00:12:10.050 align:middle line:84% where she was holding Hannah Mitchell's hand. 00:12:10.050 --> 00:12:13.470 align:middle line:84% The only one in town without an opinion. 00:12:13.470 --> 00:12:19.050 align:middle line:84% Where friends from both lives ride motorbikes, blow glass, 00:12:19.050 --> 00:12:22.530 align:middle line:84% dip their hands in pans of developer, 00:12:22.530 --> 00:12:25.980 align:middle line:84% split hairs and kindling, dissolving 00:12:25.980 --> 00:12:30.600 align:middle line:84% into the dark spinach shade of an Independence morning. 00:12:30.600 --> 00:12:37.800 align:middle line:84% Holding foam cups to their chins, steaming polarized lenses. 00:12:37.800 --> 00:12:41.160 align:middle line:84% We break from the nine headed, two story 00:12:41.160 --> 00:12:44.520 align:middle line:90% loaves of sourdough and puppets. 00:12:44.520 --> 00:12:48.960 align:middle line:84% The silver pockets of gossip spit on the green. 00:12:48.960 --> 00:12:52.260 align:middle line:84% Korshak's tawny specters in harness, 00:12:52.260 --> 00:12:55.080 align:middle line:84% tug of war with Bartlett's mules. 00:12:55.080 --> 00:12:58.470 align:middle line:84% While we, on our sides behind the hedge, 00:12:58.470 --> 00:13:01.260 align:middle line:84% could have knotted our shoes together 00:13:01.260 --> 00:13:06.300 align:middle line:84% over our shoulders crossing the river twice to my Chevrolet. 00:13:06.300 --> 00:13:10.020 align:middle line:84% Instead, we brushed what we could off our clothes 00:13:10.020 --> 00:13:14.220 align:middle line:84% and ungainly walked our grass stained elbows back 00:13:14.220 --> 00:13:17.355 align:middle line:84% through this uneven midsummer's dream. 00:13:17.355 --> 00:13:25.380 align:middle line:90% 00:13:25.380 --> 00:13:27.750 align:middle line:90% We met at breakfast. 00:13:27.750 --> 00:13:31.110 align:middle line:84% I was holding forth in the Northwest corner. 00:13:31.110 --> 00:13:34.080 align:middle line:84% My subject grew wild and poisonous 00:13:34.080 --> 00:13:39.480 align:middle line:84% beyond a self-made house framed out of rough sawn boards. 00:13:39.480 --> 00:13:42.780 align:middle line:84% A clear plastic sunroof over the kitchen 00:13:42.780 --> 00:13:47.130 align:middle line:84% climbing toward the waves of a stainless steel roof, 00:13:47.130 --> 00:13:50.700 align:middle line:84% surrounded by lime green tamarack 00:13:50.700 --> 00:13:53.820 align:middle line:90% with their tight little cones. 00:13:53.820 --> 00:13:56.100 align:middle line:90% To my right, Tony, 00:13:56.100 --> 00:14:02.100 align:middle line:84% a carpenter, stabbed a sausage with a fork while Alice, mother 00:14:02.100 --> 00:14:07.050 align:middle line:84% of nearly three appetites, scouted for bits of yellow egg tangled 00:14:07.050 --> 00:14:08.250 align:middle line:90% in his beard. 00:14:08.250 --> 00:14:11.550 align:middle line:84% And watched his tobacco stained finger scrape 00:14:11.550 --> 00:14:16.410 align:middle line:84% the air for that passionate word stuck between his tongue 00:14:16.410 --> 00:14:21.150 align:middle line:84% and an inherited tooth bent inward. 00:14:21.150 --> 00:14:25.290 align:middle line:84% She appeared in the Southeast, barely awake, 00:14:25.290 --> 00:14:27.780 align:middle line:84% not late enough to miss a spotted griddle 00:14:27.780 --> 00:14:31.980 align:middle line:84% cake, a lacquered wave of bacon, and the forehead 00:14:31.980 --> 00:14:33.810 align:middle line:90% of the carnelian orange 00:14:33.810 --> 00:14:38.850 align:middle line:84% bearded, medium tall, skinny man next to her--streaked violet 00:14:38.850 --> 00:14:43.680 align:middle line:84% and aquamarine under the ruptured glass lamp--frowned, 00:14:43.680 --> 00:14:46.980 align:middle line:84% nd they were introduced as Tom the glass blower 00:14:46.980 --> 00:14:50.320 align:middle line:90% and Deborah the sculptor. 00:14:50.320 --> 00:14:55.020 align:middle line:84% Sniedze, a Latvian weaver, reached across the equator 00:14:55.020 --> 00:14:57.660 align:middle line:84% for a brown crock of whipped butter 00:14:57.660 --> 00:15:02.040 align:middle line:84% and said she loved the wild mushrooms in the mixed forest 00:15:02.040 --> 00:15:03.840 align:middle line:90% behind her farm. 00:15:03.840 --> 00:15:07.590 align:middle line:84% Her calloused fingers steaming over a coffee mug 00:15:07.590 --> 00:15:10.920 align:middle line:84% and listening to me chant Armillaria mellea, 00:15:10.920 --> 00:15:13.170 align:middle line:90% Amanita muscaria. 00:15:13.170 --> 00:15:18.480 align:middle line:84% Sniedze replied, her hair woven into vines, 00:15:18.480 --> 00:15:21.570 align:middle line:84% that honey mushrooms are fall mushrooms 00:15:21.570 --> 00:15:25.170 align:middle line:90% and this was not even July. 00:15:25.170 --> 00:15:27.420 align:middle line:90% Deborah joined our walk. 00:15:27.420 --> 00:15:30.810 align:middle line:84% And Tom would, but he was met at the screen door 00:15:30.810 --> 00:15:35.130 align:middle line:84% by a protege who blew milk white shaded glass 00:15:35.130 --> 00:15:38.940 align:middle line:84% revolvers, shouldering a Machiavellian 00:15:38.940 --> 00:15:42.090 align:middle line:84% dagger shaped punty that would gather 00:15:42.090 --> 00:15:46.350 align:middle line:84% from the iron pots, blooming on the furnace floor 00:15:46.350 --> 00:15:49.860 align:middle line:84% gingers of milky opaline, that they 00:15:49.860 --> 00:15:55.020 align:middle line:84% would embed within and overlay the red foot of the mouth blown 00:15:55.020 --> 00:15:59.280 align:middle line:84% goblet joined to the blowing iron rim. 00:15:59.280 --> 00:16:02.640 align:middle line:84% Then, after he warmed another punty 00:16:02.640 --> 00:16:06.090 align:middle line:84% and thrust it into the bottom of the webbed foot, 00:16:06.090 --> 00:16:09.150 align:middle line:84% she filed the lip into a jagged edge, 00:16:09.150 --> 00:16:15.210 align:middle line:84% broke it away from his pipe, balanced like a swan roasting on a skewer. 00:16:15.210 --> 00:16:18.540 align:middle line:84% Then Tom flaring the whip with a tongue 00:16:18.540 --> 00:16:21.180 align:middle line:84% pressed the shoulder with a pin snip. 00:16:21.180 --> 00:16:25.710 align:middle line:84% Then all together, driving it home into the glory 00:16:25.710 --> 00:16:30.660 align:middle line:84% hole after which he gave it, like a sleeping flamingo, 00:16:30.660 --> 00:16:34.470 align:middle line:84% to the infinite disregard of the annealing oven. 00:16:34.470 --> 00:16:41.680 align:middle line:90% 00:16:41.680 --> 00:16:42.725 align:middle line:90% Ambassador Lanes. 00:16:42.725 --> 00:16:48.740 align:middle line:90% 00:16:48.740 --> 00:16:51.260 align:middle line:84% Kneeling over the bean row, your back 00:16:51.260 --> 00:16:55.190 align:middle line:84% to the river, the breeze throwing your black shoulder 00:16:55.190 --> 00:17:00.710 align:middle line:84% length hair across your eyes, you groom and prune a bush. 00:17:00.710 --> 00:17:03.560 align:middle line:84% Catherine-- your live in lover's part time 00:17:03.560 --> 00:17:07.670 align:middle line:84% mistress in another room furnished for a queen- sized 00:17:07.670 --> 00:17:10.609 align:middle line:84% mattress under your ceramic, relief 00:17:10.609 --> 00:17:14.780 align:middle line:84% on the wall and the memory of the anonymous corpse 00:17:14.780 --> 00:17:19.040 align:middle line:84% of your friendship buzzes the blue flowered rosemary 00:17:19.040 --> 00:17:21.859 align:middle line:90% on the windowsill. 00:17:21.859 --> 00:17:25.099 align:middle line:84% She refuses our invitation to drive anywhere 00:17:25.099 --> 00:17:29.690 align:middle line:84% we please after a meal of carp roe and summer onions 00:17:29.690 --> 00:17:32.480 align:middle line:90% cut on the diagonal. 00:17:32.480 --> 00:17:35.330 align:middle line:84% Plenty of wine and you both whisper 00:17:35.330 --> 00:17:38.630 align:middle line:84% over the length of my thumbs, follow the ravine 00:17:38.630 --> 00:17:39.785 align:middle line:90% up the back of my neck. 00:17:39.785 --> 00:17:42.290 align:middle line:90% 00:17:42.290 --> 00:17:46.040 align:middle line:84% At Ambassador Lanes we slide three fingers 00:17:46.040 --> 00:17:49.730 align:middle line:84% into the swirling red and black holes. 00:17:49.730 --> 00:17:54.980 align:middle line:84% Deborah's throw pulls straight into her father's twisted wire 00:17:54.980 --> 00:17:59.510 align:middle line:84% furniture factory, above the chairs burning to the ground. 00:17:59.510 --> 00:18:04.820 align:middle line:84% Floor of bankruptcy and welfare, a split. 00:18:04.820 --> 00:18:09.620 align:middle line:84% Her mother loses herself in a sequence of other men. 00:18:09.620 --> 00:18:14.360 align:middle line:84% I hook into the gutter my right arm and leg arching upward 00:18:14.360 --> 00:18:17.420 align:middle line:84% into the new Stone Age statue of a messenger, 00:18:17.420 --> 00:18:22.760 align:middle line:84% who having swallowed courage in the face of 10 enemies 00:18:22.760 --> 00:18:24.320 align:middle line:90% was bringing it up. 00:18:24.320 --> 00:18:31.280 align:middle line:84% Balanced on one shoe, dyed the purslane colors of memory. 00:18:31.280 --> 00:18:36.530 align:middle line:84% The smoldering beds of cedar shingles, hose, and firemen 00:18:36.530 --> 00:18:40.520 align:middle line:84% percolate on the evening news after brother Jeff 00:18:40.520 --> 00:18:45.020 align:middle line:84% and I drove home from the shortest day of summer 00:18:45.020 --> 00:18:47.660 align:middle line:90% at the retail yard. 00:18:47.660 --> 00:18:52.790 align:middle line:84% At the Thrush, we lick salt off a shared margarita 00:18:52.790 --> 00:18:58.520 align:middle line:84% and the cobweb from our private cellars of purpose and desire. 00:18:58.520 --> 00:19:01.880 align:middle line:84% Under the green stripe canopy, under the stars 00:19:01.880 --> 00:19:05.300 align:middle line:84% bleeding into rain, we run for the bucket seats 00:19:05.300 --> 00:19:07.190 align:middle line:90% of the Chevrolet. 00:19:07.190 --> 00:19:10.640 align:middle line:84% In the driveway (your man in the house just a lamp 00:19:10.640 --> 00:19:13.700 align:middle line:84% glowing through the window shade) 00:19:13.700 --> 00:19:18.860 align:middle line:84% we touch hands and Deborah, Luna moth against the windshield 00:19:18.860 --> 00:19:22.670 align:middle line:84% says, no one should feel remorse. 00:19:22.670 --> 00:19:26.480 align:middle line:84% Come at 7:00 on the 2nd of July, Tom 00:19:26.480 --> 00:19:30.980 align:middle line:84% will be off blowing glass at the Bennington fair. 00:19:30.980 --> 00:19:32.120 align:middle line:90% We kissed. 00:19:32.120 --> 00:19:34.430 align:middle line:84% She threw her arms like coral snakes 00:19:34.430 --> 00:19:37.880 align:middle line:84% against the glass, her fingers opening 00:19:37.880 --> 00:19:41.300 align:middle line:84% into the white tentacles of sea anemone 00:19:41.300 --> 00:19:44.660 align:middle line:90% and said, suck my blood. 00:19:44.660 --> 00:19:48.980 align:middle line:84% In love, I drove down Eva Foster Road, 00:19:48.980 --> 00:19:52.640 align:middle line:84% where a doe in my headlights missing an ear 00:19:52.640 --> 00:19:56.660 align:middle line:84% bounded out of a cornfield and into the ferns. 00:19:56.660 --> 00:20:00.680 align:middle line:84% While Deborah walked back into an arrangement of arms, 00:20:00.680 --> 00:20:05.600 align:middle line:84% her eyelids like skin divers swimming into the aquamarine 00:20:05.600 --> 00:20:11.330 align:middle line:84% atmosphere of solitude, knowing that night when Tom reached 00:20:11.330 --> 00:20:15.080 align:middle line:84% for her she and I would be elsewhere 00:20:15.080 --> 00:20:21.170 align:middle line:84% and occasionally watching Tom in the clear, unsympathetic dark. 00:20:21.170 --> 00:20:29.640 align:middle line:90% 00:20:29.640 --> 00:20:30.525 align:middle line:90% A Glass of Burgundy. 00:20:30.525 --> 00:20:33.600 align:middle line:90% 00:20:33.600 --> 00:20:37.660 align:middle line:84% The powder blue boxer shorts fly out the window. 00:20:37.660 --> 00:20:41.400 align:middle line:84% This is dawn unraveling, our several nights 00:20:41.400 --> 00:20:46.230 align:middle line:84% rowing the porcelain tubs of the Windmill Arms, the Doll House 00:20:46.230 --> 00:20:49.770 align:middle line:90% Hotel, and the Do-Drop-Inn. 00:20:49.770 --> 00:20:53.490 align:middle line:84% A French-Canadian trucker, a ceremonial pipe feather 00:20:53.490 --> 00:20:56.970 align:middle line:84% that ensnares the sunlight behind the cab swerving 00:20:56.970 --> 00:21:02.130 align:middle line:84% on the right, shakes an orange and green eagle on a fist. 00:21:02.130 --> 00:21:05.250 align:middle line:84% Throws it into neutral and screams, 00:21:05.250 --> 00:21:09.690 align:middle line:84% Vive La France, driving us into the left shoulder 00:21:09.690 --> 00:21:12.600 align:middle line:90% of another conversation. 00:21:12.600 --> 00:21:16.770 align:middle line:84% At the beaver pond under the lime yellow light dashing 00:21:16.770 --> 00:21:21.240 align:middle line:84% the foliage, we clamped a log between our legs. 00:21:21.240 --> 00:21:25.950 align:middle line:84% Your bitterness like fields of salvage, the mounds of seagulls 00:21:25.950 --> 00:21:29.610 align:middle line:84% picking it clean, explained that Tom littered the house 00:21:29.610 --> 00:21:33.000 align:middle line:84% with students and other androgynies. 00:21:33.000 --> 00:21:37.440 align:middle line:84% Limbo walking from the screened porch to the kitchen. 00:21:37.440 --> 00:21:41.670 align:middle line:84% Your privacy and half a room to squeeze clay 00:21:41.670 --> 00:21:45.930 align:middle line:84% into the torsos and facades of other centuries 00:21:45.930 --> 00:21:48.750 align:middle line:90% a premium he couldn't afford. 00:21:48.750 --> 00:21:54.360 align:middle line:84% Your ambition, the clear orange lacquer of embarrassment. 00:21:54.360 --> 00:21:58.110 align:middle line:84% A size 34 arm around your waist, you 00:21:58.110 --> 00:22:01.740 align:middle line:84% spotted the exhibitionist beaver climbing 00:22:01.740 --> 00:22:05.940 align:middle line:84% over his intuitive engineering to bring a river birch 00:22:05.940 --> 00:22:07.290 align:middle line:90% to a point. 00:22:07.290 --> 00:22:11.550 align:middle line:84% And I having seen through a knot hole in your words, 00:22:11.550 --> 00:22:13.920 align:middle line:84% something so large that it could not 00:22:13.920 --> 00:22:17.160 align:middle line:84% be traced without appearing surrounded 00:22:17.160 --> 00:22:21.210 align:middle line:84% by the outline of my marriage, buried a year ago 00:22:21.210 --> 00:22:23.190 align:middle line:90% in a glass of burgundy. 00:22:23.190 --> 00:22:29.610 align:middle line:84% Its opaque surface now marooned in shadow. And the light breeze 00:22:29.610 --> 00:22:32.850 align:middle line:84% over the pond passed through the room papered 00:22:32.850 --> 00:22:35.790 align:middle line:90% with mica thin poplar leaves. 00:22:35.790 --> 00:22:38.910 align:middle line:84% Where we took a shortcut the evening before 00:22:38.910 --> 00:22:43.950 align:middle line:84% and you climbed the ladder down, removing yourself from the loft 00:22:43.950 --> 00:22:45.990 align:middle line:90% and summer trappings. 00:22:45.990 --> 00:22:48.240 align:middle line:90% Shorts in an open apartment-- 00:22:48.240 --> 00:22:51.960 align:middle line:84% Shorts and a chartreuse tie dyed affair 00:22:51.960 --> 00:22:55.050 align:middle line:84% climbing to an orchid double knot 00:22:55.050 --> 00:23:00.180 align:middle line:84% marking the equatorial latitude of a suntan. 00:23:00.180 --> 00:23:05.790 align:middle line:84% Joining you, we look away to the offerings of a pine: bronze 00:23:05.790 --> 00:23:09.390 align:middle line:84% and ivory filigreed cones, inches from 00:23:09.390 --> 00:23:12.960 align:middle line:84% the complimentary reflections on the sill 00:23:12.960 --> 00:23:15.810 align:middle line:90% around the L-shaped ottoman. 00:23:15.810 --> 00:23:19.500 align:middle line:84% And connect our birthmarks like constellations 00:23:19.500 --> 00:23:24.390 align:middle line:84% upon the thick and scratchy blue triangle of a white rug's 00:23:24.390 --> 00:23:26.730 align:middle line:90% shifting currents. 00:23:26.730 --> 00:23:31.350 align:middle line:84% First, I shrivel like a snail under the tap of a shoe. 00:23:31.350 --> 00:23:35.700 align:middle line:84% Then you become the airdried plumage of a waterfall, 00:23:35.700 --> 00:23:38.940 align:middle line:84% and then you step out of the shower, 00:23:38.940 --> 00:23:43.770 align:middle line:84% white leaf draped around a sugar beet, into a house in the woods 00:23:43.770 --> 00:23:49.110 align:middle line:84% without shades, night, and all the lights of every window 00:23:49.110 --> 00:23:52.380 align:middle line:84% a portrait of you and me in the moon 00:23:52.380 --> 00:23:56.340 align:middle line:84% sliding across the skylight illuminating 00:23:56.340 --> 00:23:59.040 align:middle line:84% the white fingernail under your eye. 00:23:59.040 --> 00:24:02.490 align:middle line:84% And your surprise seeing yourself 00:24:02.490 --> 00:24:05.100 align:middle line:84% turn an argument against marriage 00:24:05.100 --> 00:24:10.830 align:middle line:84% into an argument for the moonlit movements of deer, their way 00:24:10.830 --> 00:24:13.320 align:middle line:90% through the back clearing. 00:24:13.320 --> 00:24:17.190 align:middle line:84% The moon lifts in silence, filling the window 00:24:17.190 --> 00:24:19.530 align:middle line:90% over the black iron stove. 00:24:19.530 --> 00:24:22.440 align:middle line:84% You break the vigil, the deer twitch 00:24:22.440 --> 00:24:25.050 align:middle line:90% their ears, the deer leap. 00:24:25.050 --> 00:24:27.900 align:middle line:84% You are sure if you took a husband 00:24:27.900 --> 00:24:32.370 align:middle line:84% it must be someone who could listen in the dark for hours 00:24:32.370 --> 00:24:33.255 align:middle line:90% without fear. 00:24:33.255 --> 00:24:39.320 align:middle line:90% 00:24:39.320 --> 00:24:43.490 align:middle line:84% My throat started giving out a bit there. 00:24:43.490 --> 00:24:47.860 align:middle line:90% Summer Constellations. 00:24:47.860 --> 00:24:52.690 align:middle line:84% She pinched a daydream of black flies under the house on piers. 00:24:52.690 --> 00:24:56.680 align:middle line:84% We sprawled with the panic grass around the gelatinous 00:24:56.680 --> 00:25:01.690 align:middle line:84% brown and cream rimmed cups of mid-July, humidity. 00:25:01.690 --> 00:25:05.170 align:middle line:84% Dead bees and moths circling away 00:25:05.170 --> 00:25:10.150 align:middle line:84% under clouded butterflies along the concrete pillar. 00:25:10.150 --> 00:25:13.750 align:middle line:84% An intensive specialist, she applied thumbs 00:25:13.750 --> 00:25:18.040 align:middle line:84% to the rawhide knotted in my tailbone. 00:25:18.040 --> 00:25:21.400 align:middle line:84% Her curling dark Mediterranean hair 00:25:21.400 --> 00:25:26.950 align:middle line:84% fell on my shoulder blades pressing on to the chicken pox 00:25:26.950 --> 00:25:31.540 align:middle line:84% crater where my eyebrows, like the black pearl handles 00:25:31.540 --> 00:25:34.840 align:middle line:84% of dueling pistols, crossed straining 00:25:34.840 --> 00:25:39.190 align:middle line:84% to hear Deborah, her sister through the floorboard. 00:25:39.190 --> 00:25:43.690 align:middle line:84% Tom at the other end of the line eventually 00:25:43.690 --> 00:25:47.110 align:middle line:84% made headway into her tolerance for the techniques 00:25:47.110 --> 00:25:52.540 align:middle line:84% of blame and stress, offhanded and sarcastic. 00:25:52.540 --> 00:25:56.440 align:middle line:84% Until she felt herself flaring up like sailfish 00:25:56.440 --> 00:26:00.340 align:middle line:84% into the vengeance of insulin floundering 00:26:00.340 --> 00:26:07.670 align:middle line:84% in the air which caves in, coming back out of breath, crying. 00:26:07.670 --> 00:26:09.940 align:middle line:84% Having promised her and ourselves 00:26:09.940 --> 00:26:12.700 align:middle line:84% that we could hold back, but close enough 00:26:12.700 --> 00:26:17.680 align:middle line:84% under 12 tons of plexiglas and western red cedar 00:26:17.680 --> 00:26:23.110 align:middle line:84% we crawled out into handfuls of wood soil and morning glories 00:26:23.110 --> 00:26:24.940 align:middle line:90% trailing up the porch. 00:26:24.940 --> 00:26:29.320 align:middle line:84% Well Deborah, her knees tucked into her neck, her fists 00:26:29.320 --> 00:26:33.460 align:middle line:84% like milkweed pods crammed against her eyes, 00:26:33.460 --> 00:26:36.460 align:middle line:90% was about to burst. 00:26:36.460 --> 00:26:39.460 align:middle line:84% Tom arrived moments after we left 00:26:39.460 --> 00:26:43.690 align:middle line:84% for the neon arrow of the Jockey motel, 00:26:43.690 --> 00:26:49.810 align:middle line:84% broke a knife between his fingers and at a still moment 00:26:49.810 --> 00:26:52.960 align:middle line:84% he put his foot through the louvered pine door 00:26:52.960 --> 00:26:58.240 align:middle line:84% leaving Cynthia in the deneivehosture of a porcelain bowl 00:26:58.240 --> 00:27:01.330 align:middle line:84% her belly turning the fear and cereal. 00:27:01.330 --> 00:27:08.930 align:middle line:90% 00:27:08.930 --> 00:27:09.800 align:middle line:90% Of Another Life. 00:27:09.800 --> 00:27:13.680 align:middle line:90% 00:27:13.680 --> 00:27:18.180 align:middle line:84% We took a room with moss rose wallpaper and a balcony view 00:27:18.180 --> 00:27:19.800 align:middle line:90% above the lobby. 00:27:19.800 --> 00:27:24.540 align:middle line:84% A fairy ring of perch washed up and spaced four feet apart 00:27:24.540 --> 00:27:27.840 align:middle line:90% like sentries guarding the lake. 00:27:27.840 --> 00:27:31.770 align:middle line:84% A tap at the door and the embarrassed voice of a girl 00:27:31.770 --> 00:27:36.360 align:middle line:84% asked that we pull the curtain inside the stall. 00:27:36.360 --> 00:27:42.300 align:middle line:84% That evening we poked at fat herrings, chopped and swimming 00:27:42.300 --> 00:27:47.490 align:middle line:84% on their sides in sour cream, washed down in dark ale. 00:27:47.490 --> 00:27:51.180 align:middle line:84% Staring off into the knotty pine, images of Rembrandt 00:27:51.180 --> 00:27:55.470 align:middle line:84% like old men pointing their gnarled storybook thumbs 00:27:55.470 --> 00:27:57.780 align:middle line:90% at children and stocking caps. 00:27:57.780 --> 00:28:01.710 align:middle line:84% Floating out of the rain stained ceiling, 00:28:01.710 --> 00:28:04.950 align:middle line:84% we joined them in a grand promenade 00:28:04.950 --> 00:28:09.600 align:middle line:84% around the lounge and ottomans arranged like a newspaper 00:28:09.600 --> 00:28:13.590 align:middle line:84% labyrinth, where a silver haired gentleman bites 00:28:13.590 --> 00:28:16.800 align:middle line:84% into a tortoiseshell cigarette holder 00:28:16.800 --> 00:28:22.530 align:middle line:84% twisting the Montreal star into a rush rag. 00:28:22.530 --> 00:28:27.030 align:middle line:84% On the outskirts, a dowager pressed a diamond solitaire 00:28:27.030 --> 00:28:29.010 align:middle line:90% to the side of her nose. 00:28:29.010 --> 00:28:32.760 align:middle line:84% By the side of a willow rocker and under our room, 00:28:32.760 --> 00:28:36.240 align:middle line:84% a dark irradiating ectoplasm like 00:28:36.240 --> 00:28:41.790 align:middle line:84% an overturned Russian cathedral watermarked the red carpet. 00:28:41.790 --> 00:28:47.130 align:middle line:84% Outside a cat went from one fish to another surveying 00:28:47.130 --> 00:28:49.920 align:middle line:84% the loss of the House of Denmark. 00:28:49.920 --> 00:28:53.070 align:middle line:90% We walked stones across the water. 00:28:53.070 --> 00:28:57.330 align:middle line:84% The moon cut the corner off a cloud floating in the lake, 00:28:57.330 --> 00:29:03.700 align:middle line:84% the best throw spinning still across it before it sank. 00:29:03.700 --> 00:29:05.760 align:middle line:84% We might as well have chased the cat 00:29:05.760 --> 00:29:09.090 align:middle line:84% or given ourselves, with the Isabella moths, 00:29:09.090 --> 00:29:12.750 align:middle line:84% to the coming severity of winter. 00:29:12.750 --> 00:29:15.840 align:middle line:84% Three things were perfectly clear: 00:29:15.840 --> 00:29:19.620 align:middle line:84% the formal Dane had powdered the sickle shaped bags 00:29:19.620 --> 00:29:24.180 align:middle line:84% under his eyes with a red diagonal stitch. 00:29:24.180 --> 00:29:27.510 align:middle line:84% Confused by the current passing between us, 00:29:27.510 --> 00:29:33.000 align:middle line:84% he didn't charge for the herrings that choked in ice. 00:29:33.000 --> 00:29:38.040 align:middle line:84% And we were afraid that all our concoctions whipped in fever 00:29:38.040 --> 00:29:40.890 align:middle line:84% and without sleep would evaporate 00:29:40.890 --> 00:29:45.300 align:middle line:84% after American customs and with the dew. 00:29:45.300 --> 00:29:48.450 align:middle line:84% Stopping for the expected search through the ashtray, 00:29:48.450 --> 00:29:50.190 align:middle line:90% we lost ourselves. 00:29:50.190 --> 00:29:54.990 align:middle line:84% Familiar back roads over hung with the jade-green finery 00:29:54.990 --> 00:29:59.400 align:middle line:84% of mid-July, afraid even to sit on a rock 00:29:59.400 --> 00:30:02.940 align:middle line:84% and eat a sandwich because the man she left, 00:30:02.940 --> 00:30:07.050 align:middle line:84% the "Tom I'm going away to think a while" letter, 00:30:07.050 --> 00:30:08.340 align:middle line:90% had a temper. 00:30:08.340 --> 00:30:11.610 align:middle line:84% The killing arts tucked under his sash 00:30:11.610 --> 00:30:14.910 align:middle line:84% and having lived together for nearly nine years, 00:30:14.910 --> 00:30:18.360 align:middle line:84% they kept their short flings from each other, the loose keys 00:30:18.360 --> 00:30:19.680 align:middle line:90% in their pockets. 00:30:19.680 --> 00:30:24.540 align:middle line:84% But they came together with the international diplomacy 00:30:24.540 --> 00:30:26.170 align:middle line:90% of alley cats. 00:30:26.170 --> 00:30:31.380 align:middle line:84% And when one morning Tom walked downstairs and split open 00:30:31.380 --> 00:30:37.050 align:middle line:84% her cheek just under the eye with a dew claw, 00:30:37.050 --> 00:30:43.050 align:middle line:84% she tried hysterically, all 93 pounds of her, to take him back. 00:30:43.050 --> 00:30:49.780 align:middle line:90% 00:30:49.780 --> 00:30:50.575 align:middle line:90% The Russian Hour. 00:30:50.575 --> 00:30:53.950 align:middle line:90% 00:30:53.950 --> 00:30:57.190 align:middle line:84% I caught you eating snapped beans 00:30:57.190 --> 00:31:03.310 align:middle line:84% as long as Tolstoy's fingers out from under his muslin, turnips, 00:31:03.310 --> 00:31:10.390 align:middle line:84% albino white, wild pheasant and not your first humid succotash. 00:31:10.390 --> 00:31:12.880 align:middle line:84% The laundromat I was calling from 00:31:12.880 --> 00:31:17.170 align:middle line:84% was your native stamping ground in the Northeast Kingdom. 00:31:17.170 --> 00:31:22.300 align:middle line:84% Moat of poverty, mud palace, blood on snow, 00:31:22.300 --> 00:31:26.300 align:middle line:84% you're about to leave Writer's Mecca, Iowa for Athens, 00:31:26.300 --> 00:31:31.240 align:middle line:84% Ohio, climb 3 flights and teach on a hill. 00:31:31.240 --> 00:31:34.690 align:middle line:84% Have your child again and a second wife. 00:31:34.690 --> 00:31:39.100 align:middle line:84% A poet whose words radiate like the nicotine gold 00:31:39.100 --> 00:31:44.020 align:middle line:84% flourish of your right thumb under kerosene light. 00:31:44.020 --> 00:31:47.920 align:middle line:84% She took you for drives along a clear tributary of the Hocking 00:31:47.920 --> 00:31:51.160 align:middle line:84% river, a ladle handle scooping up 00:31:51.160 --> 00:31:54.910 align:middle line:84% into a cave over which a spray cools 00:31:54.910 --> 00:31:59.920 align:middle line:84% the air of her blonde hair fanning out on the water. 00:31:59.920 --> 00:32:02.890 align:middle line:84% While the three of you bathe, chewed on 00:32:02.890 --> 00:32:07.270 align:middle line:84% the altogether round and peppery leaves of watercress, 00:32:07.270 --> 00:32:11.470 align:middle line:84% waiting up the stream to tease the big mouthed chubs 00:32:11.470 --> 00:32:13.960 align:middle line:90% and suckers. 00:32:13.960 --> 00:32:17.830 align:middle line:84% By then, we wouldn't speak to each other for the fourth time 00:32:17.830 --> 00:32:19.210 align:middle line:90% in our lives. 00:32:19.210 --> 00:32:22.300 align:middle line:84% Like spittle on a shard of pottery 00:32:22.300 --> 00:32:26.470 align:middle line:84% emerging from a mound of ash, a part of me 00:32:26.470 --> 00:32:29.140 align:middle line:90% would offend a part of you. 00:32:29.140 --> 00:32:32.710 align:middle line:84% Between us we shared four wedding ceremonies 00:32:32.710 --> 00:32:34.780 align:middle line:90% alone with our wives. 00:32:34.780 --> 00:32:38.830 align:middle line:84% But I began this page calling you away from supper. 00:32:38.830 --> 00:32:43.240 align:middle line:84% To say I'm in love but overturned by all the harm that 00:32:43.240 --> 00:32:46.810 align:middle line:90% scattered in and around us. 00:32:46.810 --> 00:32:51.970 align:middle line:84% Our friend in Montreal takes his demolition derby jacket out 00:32:51.970 --> 00:32:55.180 align:middle line:84% of the closet, where his child, wife, 00:32:55.180 --> 00:32:58.690 align:middle line:84% their refrigerated vitamins and their ziplock bag 00:32:58.690 --> 00:33:01.780 align:middle line:84% must eat the door handle for breakfast. 00:33:01.780 --> 00:33:04.300 align:middle line:90% 00:33:04.300 --> 00:33:09.100 align:middle line:84% Deborah has been living with another man in 3 states, five 00:33:09.100 --> 00:33:12.170 align:middle line:90% towns and for nine years. 00:33:12.170 --> 00:33:15.100 align:middle line:84% I met her at a morning feast, took her along 00:33:15.100 --> 00:33:19.510 align:middle line:84% with a Latvian Penelope to a mixed forest. 00:33:19.510 --> 00:33:24.310 align:middle line:84% Deborah was thawing squid for the deep fryer for Tom and me, 00:33:24.310 --> 00:33:26.800 align:middle line:90% if I would come. 00:33:26.800 --> 00:33:31.990 align:middle line:84% Tom was scraping silver off the marver well into a sunset 00:33:31.990 --> 00:33:35.200 align:middle line:84% and so this small figure of a woman--who 00:33:35.200 --> 00:33:38.440 align:middle line:84% might have been a Daughter of the American Revolution, 00:33:38.440 --> 00:33:41.920 align:middle line:84% a Mediterranean street vendor, or the portrait 00:33:41.920 --> 00:33:45.790 align:middle line:84% of a powdered obelisk at the Palace of Versailles-- 00:33:45.790 --> 00:33:49.330 align:middle line:84% set me down in a living room wrapped 00:33:49.330 --> 00:33:54.610 align:middle line:84% with earth colored clay, knotted metal, and certain rat tail. 00:33:54.610 --> 00:33:59.560 align:middle line:84% She opened her leather portfolio of photographs across my lap 00:33:59.560 --> 00:34:03.880 align:middle line:84% to a ceramic long ship tattooed with industrial gears 00:34:03.880 --> 00:34:07.480 align:middle line:84% and the fragments of kitchenware exploding out 00:34:07.480 --> 00:34:12.699 align:middle line:84% of the spheres across a page to the right stoneware and linen 00:34:12.699 --> 00:34:15.310 align:middle line:90% mop bodied quadruped. 00:34:15.310 --> 00:34:20.500 align:middle line:84% A crustacean stepping out of a prehistoric assembly line. 00:34:20.500 --> 00:34:24.880 align:middle line:84% Her eye for the abstract and too real, believably 00:34:24.880 --> 00:34:30.429 align:middle line:84% culled from the ancestral memory of gold and red breads 00:34:30.429 --> 00:34:34.210 align:middle line:84% braided into yards of sweatshop gabardine 00:34:34.210 --> 00:34:37.449 align:middle line:84% flung across the mud walls of Poland 00:34:37.449 --> 00:34:40.719 align:middle line:84% to the needle trade district of New York 00:34:40.719 --> 00:34:44.980 align:middle line:84% and captured in clay for any dreamer with an eye. 00:34:44.980 --> 00:34:49.810 align:middle line:84% For a highly textured figure pulling the cords of my memory 00:34:49.810 --> 00:34:56.139 align:middle line:84% through the clear convex corneal membrane just as an Indonesian 00:34:56.139 --> 00:34:59.080 align:middle line:84% faith healer's fingers pass through the living 00:34:59.080 --> 00:35:00.565 align:middle line:90% walls of the belly. 00:35:00.565 --> 00:35:06.070 align:middle line:90% 00:35:06.070 --> 00:35:08.770 align:middle line:84% Into the living walls of the belly. 00:35:08.770 --> 00:35:11.800 align:middle line:84% Tom walked into the scene of my fingers 00:35:11.800 --> 00:35:17.380 align:middle line:84% stirring in the burial ashes of her low fired wall relief. 00:35:17.380 --> 00:35:20.890 align:middle line:84% We shook hands and cheese over a garlic butter 00:35:20.890 --> 00:35:25.450 align:middle line:84% and green tentacles of parsley while our conversation 00:35:25.450 --> 00:35:29.020 align:middle line:90% glided halfway up a hill. 00:35:29.020 --> 00:35:32.560 align:middle line:84% Deborah uncovered a box of her father's letters written out 00:35:32.560 --> 00:35:34.660 align:middle line:90% of anguish and bankruptcy. 00:35:34.660 --> 00:35:37.780 align:middle line:84% The slow dissolve of marriage and the belief 00:35:37.780 --> 00:35:41.020 align:middle line:84% that his failures would smear his children 00:35:41.020 --> 00:35:43.180 align:middle line:90% and anyone who touched them. 00:35:43.180 --> 00:35:46.630 align:middle line:84% Tom picked up his fiddle, crossed the room, 00:35:46.630 --> 00:35:48.910 align:middle line:90% and sat the evening out. 00:35:48.910 --> 00:35:53.140 align:middle line:84% And when the life of the party appeared and joined 00:35:53.140 --> 00:35:57.340 align:middle line:84% our meditation on a man who would curl up on a couch 00:35:57.340 --> 00:36:01.180 align:middle line:84% after a meal one hand pinched between his legs 00:36:01.180 --> 00:36:07.600 align:middle line:84% fall asleep and mumble son of a bitch, son of a bitch. 00:36:07.600 --> 00:36:11.800 align:middle line:84% Still watching the furniture factory smoldering coals 00:36:11.800 --> 00:36:16.300 align:middle line:84% or having walked the frozen Hudson to the two story 00:36:16.300 --> 00:36:17.990 align:middle line:90% in West New York. 00:36:17.990 --> 00:36:23.350 align:middle line:84% He is just unlocking the door to no wife boiling milk 00:36:23.350 --> 00:36:27.520 align:middle line:84% or five children screaming around the machine twisted wire 00:36:27.520 --> 00:36:31.330 align:middle line:84% furniture that he designed before a crusade 00:36:31.330 --> 00:36:33.530 align:middle line:90% of legal battles 00:36:33.530 --> 00:36:35.230 align:middle line:90% led him into the present. 00:36:35.230 --> 00:36:40.570 align:middle line:84% When his playboy brother wills him a fabric store in Miami 00:36:40.570 --> 00:36:43.000 align:middle line:84% underneath a velvet red apartment 00:36:43.000 --> 00:36:47.230 align:middle line:84% complete with a garden on the roof. 00:36:47.230 --> 00:36:49.990 align:middle line:84% I saw that Tom and Deborah's marriage 00:36:49.990 --> 00:36:54.040 align:middle line:84% had taken on the ritual of ivory and black keys 00:36:54.040 --> 00:36:57.640 align:middle line:84% falling like the willing resignation of martyrs 00:36:57.640 --> 00:37:03.400 align:middle line:84% to a waltz in ragtime, or was I hypnotized. 00:37:03.400 --> 00:37:06.910 align:middle line:84% Steven, what would you do if you were 00:37:06.910 --> 00:37:10.930 align:middle line:84% leaning against the pale hospital walls of laundromat 00:37:10.930 --> 00:37:13.270 align:middle line:90% in my boots? 00:37:13.270 --> 00:37:16.390 align:middle line:84% I'd take off my pants, pinch my nose 00:37:16.390 --> 00:37:20.440 align:middle line:84% and jump while the water's warm, while the days are 00:37:20.440 --> 00:37:22.510 align:middle line:90% as long as our friendship. 00:37:22.510 --> 00:37:25.930 align:middle line:84% Congratulations, and marble fauns, 00:37:25.930 --> 00:37:28.444 align:middle line:90% and my love to your Deborah. 00:37:28.444 --> 00:37:39.270 align:middle line:90% [CLAPPING] 00:37:39.270 --> 00:37:39.770 align:middle line:90% Thank you. 00:37:39.770 --> 00:37:46.970 align:middle line:90% 00:37:46.970 --> 00:37:55.120 align:middle line:90% [CLAPPING] 00:37:55.120 --> 00:38:01.000 align:middle line:90%