WEBVTT

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So my mom wanted to name
me Brian, and my dad,

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who had seen Bruce Lee, who
in the '70s, when I was born,

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was often on TV with
his son, Brandon--

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and so my dad said,
well, what about Brandon?

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And my Chinese
grandmother, my dad's mom,

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gave me a Chinese name.

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Transliterated Brandon into
a name that was "Beh-ndon."

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And as the custom is,
she put an -ah at the end

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when she talked to
me or called to me.

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So it sounded like
"Beh-ndon ah."

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And I wanted to do a
poem with that -ah sound,

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and so this is that poem.

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It's called "Inventory."

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"The -ah was more song, and
she sang beyond the name.

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If the name were river,
the -ah flooded its banks.

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Nonetheless, in its song,
the -ah signed the air.

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Made the air mean.

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The -ah hitched and
hinged its intimacy.

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Jaw dropped, it
crooned its diminutive.

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Sang of class,
filling a back kitchen

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at lunch, where a wok clangs,
and a knife trims the gristle.

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In the stockroom with
her, it kept accounts.

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Was a ledger-- an idea of order
among Schlitz and Old Milwaukee.

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From tones in the pharynx,
from lungs that hung like two

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clipboards came the
-ah's inventory.

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She tied the -ah to my
name like that old trick,

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tongue tying cherry stem.

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Quipu or rosary, in
the knot was knowing.

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She threaded the eye
to sow a threnody.

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Liturgy, the way she sang
the vow amid the till bell--

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a field song overproduce.

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A nah, a nope, a uh-oh.

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It was abracadabra.

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An endnote.

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A colophon bearing
the binder's mark.

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It lingered incarnate
in the cold walk

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in or ghosted the
stocked aisles,

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where I stood over cans
of Ajax and Green Giant.

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The -ah was wavelength.

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A frequency shape
like a mountain range.

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It was the gesture's
aura, and like a varnish,

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it lustered my
name and diminished

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like a mark in the margin.

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It was whistle
house, a star's spur,

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and it could scold from
the meat counter, where

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she priced the chuck with a
grease pen tied to the scale.

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In her long breath, the
-ah was money to burn.

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Incense in a Folgers can.

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In the ear, as if in a mirror,
I found myself listening.

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And like all language,
it was a grave's treats.

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Singing of separateness and
tracing something complete.

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Though not on a map, its
lilt echoed the geographies,

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and she hummed it simply over
a thin broth simmered day long

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and suckled on a short rib."

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