WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:00.445 align:middle line:90% 00:00:00.445 --> 00:00:00.945 align:middle line:90% "Riddle." 00:00:00.945 --> 00:00:05.720 align:middle line:90% 00:00:05.720 --> 00:00:08.000 align:middle line:84% "It's like the queens and prostitutes 00:00:08.000 --> 00:00:11.810 align:middle line:84% at the French court, all outwardness, all silk, 00:00:11.810 --> 00:00:13.430 align:middle line:90% all corset. 00:00:13.430 --> 00:00:16.970 align:middle line:84% The wind among them, my mother's voice. 00:00:16.970 --> 00:00:20.960 align:middle line:84% Inside there's a waitress in a dull apron, 00:00:20.960 --> 00:00:24.890 align:middle line:84% the flat pan of her face is chipped and pitted. 00:00:24.890 --> 00:00:29.660 align:middle line:84% First, I notice how conventionally plain she is. 00:00:29.660 --> 00:00:33.410 align:middle line:84% And then, the gold stubbled lip over which 00:00:33.410 --> 00:00:36.710 align:middle line:90% a lover's tongue could wander. 00:00:36.710 --> 00:00:41.060 align:middle line:84% All one summer, my hunger lunged for this, 00:00:41.060 --> 00:00:44.870 align:middle line:84% or that green calabash, whose name 00:00:44.870 --> 00:00:48.460 align:middle line:84% was as hollow as the sound of wooden tackle blown, 00:00:48.460 --> 00:00:50.780 align:middle line:90% knocking at a mast. 00:00:50.780 --> 00:00:54.620 align:middle line:84% Whose name was as round as the throat of a well, 00:00:54.620 --> 00:00:58.430 align:middle line:84% down which I tossed my wishes to hear them throb 00:00:58.430 --> 00:01:01.850 align:middle line:84% a message, whose name was artichoke. 00:01:01.850 --> 00:01:05.110 align:middle line:90% 00:01:05.110 --> 00:01:07.540 align:middle line:90% Who is she kidding? 00:01:07.540 --> 00:01:12.250 align:middle line:84% Who is she anyway, talking as though she knew? 00:01:12.250 --> 00:01:14.920 align:middle line:84% When I can tell you, honey, she never 00:01:14.920 --> 00:01:20.260 align:middle line:84% even saw an artichoke until she was 18, and went to Italy, 00:01:20.260 --> 00:01:24.880 align:middle line:84% and got laid for the first time on the beach outside Talamone. 00:01:24.880 --> 00:01:28.750 align:middle line:84% And even then, that girl didn't know how to spell artichoke 00:01:28.750 --> 00:01:30.920 align:middle line:90% until she was 23. 00:01:30.920 --> 00:01:33.490 align:middle line:84% But honey, you can't fit a girl like that 00:01:33.490 --> 00:01:35.860 align:middle line:84% into the straitjacket of a book of poems. 00:01:35.860 --> 00:01:38.170 align:middle line:84% I mean, no book of poems in the world 00:01:38.170 --> 00:01:41.560 align:middle line:84% is big enough to explain how she got from Ely, Nevada, 00:01:41.560 --> 00:01:43.450 align:middle line:90% to Talamone getting laid. 00:01:43.450 --> 00:01:46.690 align:middle line:84% So she just pretends that poetry is an interstate, 00:01:46.690 --> 00:01:49.150 align:middle line:84% and here we are passing Ely, here 00:01:49.150 --> 00:01:51.940 align:middle line:84% we are copulating with Marco on the beach. 00:01:51.940 --> 00:01:55.360 align:middle line:84% All the little stitches of explaining have been cut, 00:01:55.360 --> 00:01:58.300 align:middle line:84% and we may faint dead away before she's going 00:01:58.300 --> 00:01:59.860 align:middle line:90% to tell us what the truth is. 00:01:59.860 --> 00:02:02.180 align:middle line:84% But honey, I will tell you one thing. 00:02:02.180 --> 00:02:06.310 align:middle line:84% Life is like it's cooking, and Ely was spinach 00:02:06.310 --> 00:02:10.360 align:middle line:84% untinned by grandma directly onto the plate, 00:02:10.360 --> 00:02:14.740 align:middle line:84% so that its brackish backwash, leaking, weeping, 00:02:14.740 --> 00:02:16.870 align:middle line:90% flooded the hominy. 00:02:16.870 --> 00:02:20.140 align:middle line:84% It dripped off the china the way Columbus 00:02:20.140 --> 00:02:24.430 align:middle line:84% thought the sea dripped off the lip at the end of the world. 00:02:24.430 --> 00:02:27.640 align:middle line:84% Whole ships rode off into its darkness, 00:02:27.640 --> 00:02:31.510 align:middle line:84% that the coffers of nations were squandered. 00:02:31.510 --> 00:02:36.520 align:middle line:84% Artichokes, my God, this one could sell snow to the Eskimos. 00:02:36.520 --> 00:02:42.390 align:middle line:84% This is America, honey, we don't need any damned artichokes."