You know it's going to be a good reading when you get heckled
in the intro, you know.
[LAUGHTER]
Thank you, Gabe.
Thank you, Tyler.
Thank you, Paola.
Thank you, Aria and the rest of the folks at the poet--
I mean, it's magic.
Right, it's really, really special.
It's my first time here.
It took me a while to get here.
But I'm happy to be here at long last.
What a gift, you know.
I've never seen my face so big on a projector.
[LAUGHTER]
I'm going to-- I'm going to read some poems.
I'm going to read some poems.
I'm going to start with some poems from this book.
This is my first book.
It's called "Tap Out."
And I'll start with the first poem in the book.
It's called "After the Hurricane."
It was a much-- it's important to have people in your life
who call you on your bullshit.
And-- and I had a teacher at the time, in my MFA program,
you know, that--
his name is Mark Jarman.
And I wrote this really long poem that I was so proud of.
I thought this is the best poem I've ever written.
And he said, well, the middle part is good.
[LAUGHTER]
And so, all I did is, I cut off the beginning and the end.
And then, now it's the-- it's the first poem in this book.
So the title doesn't make any sense anymore.
But I didn't have the heart to change it.
You know, and so, it's called "After the Hurricane."
300 miles North, my father beds down in a van
by the Connecticut River.
Snow tires rim deep in the silt. He
has a wool horse blanket tacked inside the windshield,
a pair of extra pants bunched into a pillow.
He has a paper bag of partially smoked butts, a Paw Sox
cap, a Zippo.
He has state sponsored cell phone minutes
and a camo jacket hung on the side view to dry.
He can see the Costco parking lot through the trees,
swelling and emptying out.
He wants to fix things with his wife.
He wants a couch to crash on.
He wants a drink.
He wants sex.
He has a few cans of kidney beans
and a tin of ShopRite tuna.
Wrinkled plastic piss bottles line the dash.
Sometimes he walks out to the river
and lets the wind sift his lank and matted hair.
Sometimes he peels his socks and stands in the murky current
and thinks about his wife, her one toe
longer than the others, her freckled hands.
He tries to hold her hands in his mind.
He tries to remember the birth years of his sons.
He tries to make sense of the papers
he signed, the icy water wetting the hem
of his pants, the river stones sharp underfoot, the wind.
I hold him like this in my mind all afternoon.