WEBVTT

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"Simple Words for Big Ideas."

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Don't try to sound
learned or literary

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when writing about sex.

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It demands the simplest words.

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One should write about it using
the very words in which he

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thinks of it.

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Never literalize it, lessening
individuality and smudging out

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its color.

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The sage bundle in its abalone
at the foot of the bed,

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he asked about it jokingly,
are you a curandero?

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And once when we lay in
impossibly bright moonlight

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through the blinds, we looked
at our striped legs, torsos,

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and feet.

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I noted his dark hands and
face, exposed to the high desert

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sun, the surprise of dark
nipples, and even darker sex.

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The Jumanos, the striped
ones of the Southern pueblos,

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their clay ollas painted with
painted peoples, Tompiro.

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Gone now, but you're here next
to me, stripped and striped

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and smelling of rivers.

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The homely concrete Anglo-Saxon,
of which we naturally

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think and speak, more effective
than the abstract Latin

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and his unhappy heritage.

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I beg to disagree.

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Colonization via language,
that part of our vocabulary

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which has come to us through
the French from the Latin,

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has added greatly to
the reach and exactness

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of the English language.

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But it's valuable as an
addition to our stock

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of Anglo-Saxon words, not
as a substitute for it.

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Our stock?

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Whose stock?

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Who speaks?

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Who listens?

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Who learns?

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Who loses?

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Who knocks?

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Who opens?

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Who's turned away?

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This evening you knock
lightly at the screen door.

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400 women and children
are turned away.

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Knock lightly, America.

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We bare our teeth in moonlight.

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The gold in your mouth gleams.

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They bare blinding veneers and
smash fists against busloads

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of entering immigrants.

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They wave flags and
carry homemade signs.

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"Return to sender."

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"Respect our 'sick' country."

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"Speak English."

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America has been invaded,
but that was 500 years ago.

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I lie along your
back to cover you.

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