WEBVTT

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As long as I brought it
up, the seed of a man,

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I have to read this poem
[LAUGHTER] from Body Betrayer.

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Also, since this poem is
about my father-in-law,

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and this is his birthday.

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I mean, he's dead, but
it's still his birthday--

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Groundhog's Day.

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It's called "Geraniums."

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"My husband does
Jolson in the kitchen.

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My father-in-law, at 81, has
taken up telling dirty jokes--

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interrupts to tell
them, or to mention,

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did we know most
people die in March?

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But today, he stands in
the garden he built--

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complete with ceramic frogs in
pools, and talks about sperm.

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How marvelous it is.

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That each time a man ejaculates,
he releases thousands.

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And out of those thousands, in
thousand times, one makes it.

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Nearly blind in one eye,
diabetic, his balance cloudy,

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he leans against the planter
and says, what a miracle of odds

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it is to be born.

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Squints out at the sky.

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My husband croons
rockabye from the kitchen.

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The trumpet flowers suck at
his father's white sleeve.

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She always makes me get
dressed up, he says.

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But where the hell am I going?

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We sit, and the light just
stays, the way it always

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would if we could make it.

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Over the pink geraniums, a
bee sounds like thousands.

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I breathe the pony odor of
peat, a trace of chlorine.

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Watch the way the water returns
through the clay frog's lips

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and jiggles the sky.

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Think of the odds against this."

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