WEBVTT

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One summer I had a
residency writing

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on Governors Island in
New York and working

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as a magazine freelancer
at World Trade Center.

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[?  Ix Tz'ihb, ?] the Maya scribe
dealt with words while watching

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the building from the island.

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And the island
from the building,

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sites of writing,
making conversation.

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This is window on my part-time
employer in the one building

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that was once two.

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I'm writing to the building
of writing that is continually

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giving us the boot.

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Writing alone can't hold it up.

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I want to say
writing created it,

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but it might have just assisted.

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And yet writing is
its own building,

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writing extends the building.

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I'm from a long line
of building extenders,

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a line that was broken.

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That line can be broken.

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It can be outlawed and
driven out of town.

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The word finding refuge in the
mountain, the mouth, the memory.

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It can be fired and
replaced, a threat erased.

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It can't all be put down.

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It rises up, an
ancestor told me.

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A few ancestors told me that.

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I will be an ancestor
telling you to rise up.

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But as a present day
person, I tend to lay there.

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I've been thrust from the
building of letters, syllables,

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characters.

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They're scattered and I lack
the will to gather them.

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It is fine to lay among them.

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Let them scramble.

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Eventually, I will get up
and put them together again.

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It won't be like I
imagined it will be.

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Immediate postscript.

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For a minute there, my
keyboard stopped working.

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I was talking about letters
and they wouldn't come.

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I did not lay calmly.

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It was not a calm,
it was a panic.

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I am wrong to say
I could be so calm.

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I would fight for a while.

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I would fight to get
back to the letter,

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to get back to the building,
fight to make a new one.