WEBVTT

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This is a section from the
title poem, "The Accidental."

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It's a long prose poem or a
whole series of prose poems

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if you believe in prose poetry.

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I know of someone in the
room who doesn't, [LAUGHS]

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and it's really OK by me.

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I'm reading this
one in conjunction

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with the final poem in the book.

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There's some resonance
between them, so,

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and this is one of the ones
that Joshua is working with.

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Our father brought
home stone and words

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for stone, blue azurite,
yellow agate, green malachite,

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pink granite, iron
pyrite, gray flint.

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I'm sorry, I just lost my place.

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He brought home
history in stone,

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fool's gold, slag, pottery
shards, geodes, turquoise beads,

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windowpanes made from mica,
arrowheads carved from obsidian,

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and fossils of inscrutable
shape left behind in old sea.

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He brought home
truckloads of earth

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to run through his sluice
box, he panned for gold flakes

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that he stored in distilled
water in a clear glass vial.

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He made magnets to sort iron
filings from the sawdust

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on his workshop floor.

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He melted iron and gold
into ring-shaped molds

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he chiseled from river stone.

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He tumbled rocks
smooth to polish

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tiger's eye for his pocket.

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He brought home graphite
pencils numbered in gradations

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of hardness and
darkness, and he kept

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his pencils sharpened
to the quick

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and ordered in a wooden drawer.

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He made paints from ground
minerals and linseed oil.

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He fired riverbank clay
with grass to make brick.

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He brought home watercolors,
and brushes, and gum erasers,

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and tracing paper
with tiny grids,

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and at night he penciled tiny
decimals into his gridded books

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while gazing through
his scope at the moon.

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He photographed star trails,
and orbiting planets,

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and he practiced mirror
writing with his sinister hand.

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He measured rain, and acid
levels in rain, in dirt.

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He walked the radius of the
mine, diviner of pipelines,

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and ore lines, and shaft
lines from the palimpsests

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of the maw's previous lives.

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He made maps of
basins and elevations.

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He made maps of weather
and night skies.

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He made dove calls
to summon doves,

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and fish lures to summon fish.

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To summon the right words,
fair words, white words,

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bright words, he made a box.

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