WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.880 align:middle line:84% OK, so you move out of the tropics 00:00:02.880 --> 00:00:07.490 align:middle line:90% and then what do you do? 00:00:07.490 --> 00:00:10.340 align:middle line:84% How do you write about landscape when you live 00:00:10.340 --> 00:00:14.540 align:middle line:90% in a major defense complex? 00:00:14.540 --> 00:00:18.500 align:middle line:84% I went from Baton Rouge to San Diego, 00:00:18.500 --> 00:00:22.010 align:middle line:84% and it's taken a long time to get that voice. 00:00:22.010 --> 00:00:28.370 align:middle line:84% In general the poems that I write out of that place, 00:00:28.370 --> 00:00:31.400 align:middle line:84% my friends on various coast like very much, 00:00:31.400 --> 00:00:34.020 align:middle line:84% editors on various coasts like them very much, 00:00:34.020 --> 00:00:35.718 align:middle line:90% and people in Montana hate them. 00:00:35.718 --> 00:00:37.760 align:middle line:84% So now you're going to get to hear a few of them. 00:00:37.760 --> 00:00:40.770 align:middle line:90% 00:00:40.770 --> 00:00:44.150 align:middle line:84% This is called "Because the Body is Not a Weapon." 00:00:44.150 --> 00:00:46.400 align:middle line:84% A few years ago we had a fiction position open, 00:00:46.400 --> 00:00:48.953 align:middle line:84% and I wanted to hire Toni Cade Bambara. 00:00:48.953 --> 00:00:50.870 align:middle line:84% So I called her, she'd just moved from Atlanta 00:00:50.870 --> 00:00:55.380 align:middle line:84% to Philadelphia to be in a more vital Black community. 00:00:55.380 --> 00:00:58.740 align:middle line:84% And she said, I was living in La Jolla, and she said, "Well, 00:00:58.740 --> 00:01:02.210 align:middle line:84% tell me about your Black community." 00:01:02.210 --> 00:01:06.500 align:middle line:84% And I said, "Well, let me put it to you this way. 00:01:06.500 --> 00:01:09.800 align:middle line:84% Where I'm living, even being a brunette 00:01:09.800 --> 00:01:11.580 align:middle line:90% puts me in the minority. 00:01:11.580 --> 00:01:14.570 align:middle line:84% So I'm not so sure about our Black community." 00:01:14.570 --> 00:01:16.280 align:middle line:90% Anyway. 00:01:16.280 --> 00:01:19.200 align:middle line:84% "Because the Body is Not a Weapon." 00:01:19.200 --> 00:01:23.040 align:middle line:90% 00:01:23.040 --> 00:01:27.150 align:middle line:84% "In this town of date palms and expensive pastry, 00:01:27.150 --> 00:01:30.190 align:middle line:90% everyone wears pastels. 00:01:30.190 --> 00:01:34.180 align:middle line:84% Everyone owns a sports car and speeds. 00:01:34.180 --> 00:01:37.810 align:middle line:84% I leap with blondes in a gymnasium of steely leotards. 00:01:37.810 --> 00:01:40.210 align:middle line:90% No one speaks to me. 00:01:40.210 --> 00:01:42.610 align:middle line:90% No one catches my eye. 00:01:42.610 --> 00:01:46.060 align:middle line:84% I eat ill-conceived Mexican takeout, pasty beans 00:01:46.060 --> 00:01:47.110 align:middle line:90% with chopped beef. 00:01:47.110 --> 00:01:53.260 align:middle line:84% In my dreams all the crepes of my life call me. 00:01:53.260 --> 00:01:55.270 align:middle line:84% I swear the only person who spoke 00:01:55.270 --> 00:01:57.220 align:middle line:84% last week had three inch toenails 00:01:57.220 --> 00:01:59.050 align:middle line:90% curled over his sandals. 00:01:59.050 --> 00:02:03.010 align:middle line:84% Oh yes, and at the grocery, a little girl in coveralls 00:02:03.010 --> 00:02:05.290 align:middle line:90% studies me when I smile. 00:02:05.290 --> 00:02:07.630 align:middle line:90% "You're not my mother." 00:02:07.630 --> 00:02:10.509 align:middle line:84% She kicks her thick legs through the cartwheels. 00:02:10.509 --> 00:02:13.510 align:middle line:90% "You're not my mother." 00:02:13.510 --> 00:02:16.450 align:middle line:84% Still, I pass slightly as a dust diamond 00:02:16.450 --> 00:02:18.700 align:middle line:90% through my pink sea cottage. 00:02:18.700 --> 00:02:21.100 align:middle line:90% And how should I take this omen? 00:02:21.100 --> 00:02:26.320 align:middle line:84% Stalled in traffic, a van of boys barks at me. 00:02:26.320 --> 00:02:28.750 align:middle line:84% 12 years old, they lick the windows, 00:02:28.750 --> 00:02:31.690 align:middle line:84% they moon their half formed buttocks, they wiggle 00:02:31.690 --> 00:02:34.600 align:middle line:90% their shell-like genitals. 00:02:34.600 --> 00:02:36.400 align:middle line:90% Do I laugh? 00:02:36.400 --> 00:02:39.360 align:middle line:84% Have I become a foreign country?"