First of all, you'll have to tell me
whether you can hear me.
This is sort of an odd rig, I've got a high chair here
that I'm sitting in.
Can you hear me?
Is it OK?
Good.
I'm going to read first, a sequence of poems
and then a short story.
Some of you may have heard some of the sequence at the awards
reading last spring.
But it's no longer now, it's finished now.
The general title of it is "Moving Out
of the Attic," which is an oblique
reference to Mrs. Rochester in Jane Eyre, the madwoman
in the attic.
And it consists of eight poems, each of which
has a title of its own.
"Moving Out of the Attic."
One.
"Metamorph."
"In the dark, from a dream of rain black and new green,
she wakes to the touch of a stranger.
In the arms of a stranger who holds her too hard.
Bone of his shoulder, bruising the bone of her cheek.
Snared, stilled in the cave of black quilt of heat.
She lies, the bruise spreading deep,
becomes stranger to herself.
A woman who breathes in dream.
The old self loosed, rising against the dark,
chilled and bitter as rain.
Knows that she has been loved by a man who loved her only
in sleep.
Dreaming her someone else.