WEBVTT

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I'm gonna read a
poem that's very new.

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I'll read three more poems.

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This is a poem I'm
still working on.

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And again, in some ways,
I owe this poem to--

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I owe this poem to my
friend Marie Howe, who--

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we keep developing subject
matter to write about.

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Now I've never
written a poem about--

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I've written a lot about
men's experience, you know?

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But I haven't really written a
poem about women's experience

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in the sense that--

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women being-- now, unfortunately
when you talk about this,

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you lapsed into PC dialect, but
women as commodity and beauty

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as a product that has
an expiration date on it

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and leaves us in the lurch.

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The poem is sort of
about my sister, who

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was a beautiful, bouncy
cheerleader and acquired

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all the skills of same
and went on in life

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and majestically put
it all behind her.

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[LAUGHTER]

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It's called, "Beauty."

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"When the tiny veins in
her face broke one week

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and left a fine, barely
noticeable purple patch

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on either cheek about
the size of dimes, a side

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effect of some
medication, my sister

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said she knew she would
never be beautiful again.

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She should know better.

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But I guess once you've been
thought of as beautiful,

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you never really get over it--

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never quite adjust to
just looking good enough

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or even unattractive.

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After all those years of
holding her breath and waiting,

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she said it was a relief
being done with beauty.

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But you could see her
pause inside that moment,

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as the knowledge spread across
her face with a fine distress,

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flattening her lips,
making her cute nose

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seem, for the first
time, a little knobby.

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I'm probably the only one in
the whole world who actually

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remembers the year
in high school

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she perfected the art of being
a dumb blonde, spending recess

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on the breezeway by the
physics lab, tossing her hair

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and laughing that canary
trill that [AUDIO OUT]

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and how she spent most
of the next 12 years

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looking for a man with
the kind of attention span

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that she could count on.

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Then one day her time
was over, done, finito.

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And all those other
beautiful women just

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kept on being
beautiful, everywhere

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you looked, walking in
that kind of elegant trance

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in which you sense they
always have one hand touching

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the secret place that
keeps their beauty safe,

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inhaling and exhaling
the perfume of it.

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I suppose we should
have thrown a funeral

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to celebrate the passing of
an era, the era of my sister's

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gorgeousness.

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But all the beautiful
people were probably

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otherwise employed that night.

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And my sister just stood
still for 30 seconds,

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then kicked some dirt over the
memory of her former looks,

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like a cat using its
hind leg to kick sand

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over its own past tense before
it moves on in a new direction.

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Now that was beautiful.

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[APPLAUSE]

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Let's see.

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