WEBVTT

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This is a poem I've been working
on in the last couple of months.

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It's called Bootleg Chekhov.

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And the reference to check off,
if you know Chekhov's stories,

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I think be clarified
at the end of the poem,

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if you don't know
them it won't be.

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But in any case, it doesn't
make any difference.

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Bootleg Chekhov.

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He had the tact--

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I should say, vernaccia
is a kind of Italian wine.

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He had the tact left to
nurse the vernaccia, now two

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glasses down already.

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And him sitting among
friends like he'd

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parked a heavy waxy brown
paper sack on his lap.

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But who saw it, invisible
and crammed with letters?

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So he thought his sullen
father unshaven, dreamed of

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would have to be
summoned to haul it away.

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The letters accused him of
not being what he wanted

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and being what he was.

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If he read them out loud,
the other men and women

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would know why he sat with
them drinking and pretending

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this was a canal town.

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The midge phased water,
the cafe deck of teak.

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That perfume the
waitress wore on her neck

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or under a wristwatch.

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He tried to make something
useful of it all.

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He took up the style the spiders
call s"itting still inside

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ourselves" as they sat inside
the silk wisps spun from

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their bellies around him.

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The men and women went on
chatting who weren't married,

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or not at least to each other.

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They drank out of the blowsy
astonished pink begonia

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swaying in the
breeze that night.

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He made a bride entering
her house newly built

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in a vineyard that
might thrive for years.

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Though cold mist
on the hillsides

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hostaged some other nights,
some nights worrisome souring.

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But hey, hello,
none of these people

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were married nor would be.

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They would never
even touch each other

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as one might hope in bed
or behind some loud funked

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out club lit by
strobes or in a bower.

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And if they had, would they
have recovered spontaneously

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from their childhoods spent
with strict and jealous gods?

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We believe in so
little or too much.

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Lonely, unlonely wavelets
on a copper beach.

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Brain waves, the
whistling we do.

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Birds in dark, thick bushes.

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