Oh, gosh.
When did we start this reading?
7:00?
Where has the time gone?
I thought I'd read some poems from the middle of the book.
It's all one section.
I wrote the poems individually.
And I wrote them all in a week and a half,
which has never happened to me before in my life.
I'm a slow writer, really.
And I'm not a high volume writer.
So I tend to be really precious about what I do write.
And I work it and work it, and try to make it into something.
But this time, I was just struck by lightning.
And it's because I was avoiding my subject.
My dad had died, finally.
He'd been dying for a long time.
He was an addict and an alcoholic.
And we all kind of knew it was coming.
But he was 52.
He died in his sleep.
And so he died right before my first book came out.
And so I'm hitting the road, reading these poems,
and a lot of them are about him.
And it was a really intense time.
And so I avoided the subject of the sort
of aftermath of his death for a long, long time.
I basically didn't write for two years,
which is devastating if you think of yourself as a writer.
And I realized that it was maybe because I
was avoiding the big, difficult subject in my life.
And so I finally was like, OK, I'll
try to write something about it.
And then all these poems came flowing out just one
after the other.
They just were waiting to be born.
And so I'll read some of these.
I might read-- we'll see.
I'll read some of them at least.
They're all called "Fixer."
I mean, the whole poem is called "Fixer."
And each individual poem has a secret title,
and I'll let you in on them as I read them.
This first one is called "Rodeo."
We're breaking into your apartment
through your bedroom window.
The maintenance guy's ladder is propped against the sill.
I climb the ladder rung by rung.
It shivers.
I try not to look down.
A face appears in the glass.
"What are you doing?"
the face says.
"I'm looking for my dad's," I say.
"I thought this was his window."
"Aren't you Ken's boy?" he says.
"No," I say.
"Chris's."
"Oh, Chris," he says.
"He's dead."
"I know," I say.
"I thought you could be Ken's," he says.
"Sorry," I say.
"Believe me," the face says, "not my first rodeo."
I climb down.
We haul the ladder to the next window and try again.