WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:09.770 align:middle line:90% 00:00:09.770 --> 00:00:11.572 align:middle line:90% I just have two more poems. 00:00:11.572 --> 00:00:13.780 align:middle line:84% Thank you again for listening and being here tonight. 00:00:13.780 --> 00:00:16.880 align:middle line:90% 00:00:16.880 --> 00:00:17.810 align:middle line:90% Antenna. 00:00:17.810 --> 00:00:22.850 align:middle line:90% 00:00:22.850 --> 00:00:28.010 align:middle line:84% Tuning not lute but car radio, Cocteau's Orpheus 00:00:28.010 --> 00:00:33.320 align:middle line:84% copies the broadcasts from a nether world for verses. 00:00:33.320 --> 00:00:35.480 align:middle line:84% His muse a circuitry my grandmother 00:00:35.480 --> 00:00:39.110 align:middle line:90% inspected nights at Motorola. 00:00:39.110 --> 00:00:43.230 align:middle line:84% Before her shift, she put me to bed, laid down beside me 00:00:43.230 --> 00:00:45.710 align:middle line:90% and smoked Parliaments-- 00:00:45.710 --> 00:00:50.960 align:middle line:84% each drag like tower light to planes overhead. 00:00:50.960 --> 00:00:54.990 align:middle line:84% From crest to crest is wavelength and frequency 00:00:54.990 --> 00:00:58.370 align:middle line:90% the number per second. 00:00:58.370 --> 00:01:02.090 align:middle line:84% Where the waves won't reach, we call shadow, 00:01:02.090 --> 00:01:05.519 align:middle line:84% count the radio's components like prosody-- 00:01:05.519 --> 00:01:13.940 align:middle line:84% diodes, triodes, tetrodes-- and dial the frequency in meters. 00:01:13.940 --> 00:01:20.240 align:middle line:84% Jack Spicer cited quasars, quasi stellar radio, traveling light 00:01:20.240 --> 00:01:23.960 align:middle line:90% years, as possible sources. 00:01:23.960 --> 00:01:30.830 align:middle line:84% I remember Orion-- one slick Matador, Tío called him-- 00:01:30.830 --> 00:01:34.640 align:middle line:84% up on South Mountain, leaning on towers, red-eyed 00:01:34.640 --> 00:01:39.410 align:middle line:84% with warning, and somehow, by frequency, by transmissions 00:01:39.410 --> 00:01:45.140 align:middle line:84% I vaguely knew, drunk with music. 00:01:45.140 --> 00:01:49.370 align:middle line:84% With ham operator, Pauline Oliveros 00:01:49.370 --> 00:01:54.050 align:middle line:84% sent a Hello to the moon's tympanum. 00:01:54.050 --> 00:01:58.800 align:middle line:84% It bounced back, dropped in pitch by a Doppler effect, 00:01:58.800 --> 00:02:04.100 align:middle line:84% and she accompanied the sound on accordion. 00:02:04.100 --> 00:02:10.820 align:middle line:84% A nana is lullaby, cradle song, I tell my mom, a nana now, 00:02:10.820 --> 00:02:15.590 align:middle line:84% and we talk about how neither of us had heard that before. 00:02:15.590 --> 00:02:20.990 align:middle line:84% Canción de cuna, the lacuna we hum and tune by, 00:02:20.990 --> 00:02:24.890 align:middle line:84% its tonic note a chord knot we worry and teethe 00:02:24.890 --> 00:02:29.480 align:middle line:90% on with night song. 00:02:29.480 --> 00:02:34.400 align:middle line:84% One grandmother with Vicks, one with Tiger Balm, 00:02:34.400 --> 00:02:36.750 align:middle line:84% rubbed fires of camphor and mint, 00:02:36.750 --> 00:02:42.920 align:middle line:84% old poultices into my chest, their palms kneading and wet 00:02:42.920 --> 00:02:46.790 align:middle line:84% with salve, its menthols, to strip the chaff 00:02:46.790 --> 00:02:50.180 align:middle line:90% and rattle in a night wheeze. 00:02:50.180 --> 00:02:52.320 align:middle line:90% Can you hear their lullabies? 00:02:52.320 --> 00:02:56.330 align:middle line:84% One like the dicho, chiquito pero picoso, 00:02:56.330 --> 00:03:00.650 align:middle line:84% one in all five tones of village dialect. 00:03:00.650 --> 00:03:03.410 align:middle line:84% With whish hum for thresholds, they 00:03:03.410 --> 00:03:06.400 align:middle line:84% put to bed each name for the night. 00:03:06.400 --> 00:03:08.950 align:middle line:90% 00:03:08.950 --> 00:03:11.980 align:middle line:84% In Cocteau's version, Orpheus crosses over 00:03:11.980 --> 00:03:14.650 align:middle line:90% through a tailor's mirror. 00:03:14.650 --> 00:03:19.850 align:middle line:84% The carnival house optics of Marx's commodity fetish, 00:03:19.850 --> 00:03:23.030 align:middle line:84% I thought, or my father in Phoenix, 00:03:23.030 --> 00:03:25.930 align:middle line:84% stocking the reach-in with Old Milwaukee 00:03:25.930 --> 00:03:31.810 align:middle line:84% and seeing in the glass, a brief moment, his own reflection. 00:03:31.810 --> 00:03:36.760 align:middle line:84% Ai Gu tells me my great grandfather frequented Chinatown 00:03:36.760 --> 00:03:42.760 align:middle line:84% fortune tellers, ones with charts and calendars, 00:03:42.760 --> 00:03:48.280 align:middle line:84% a crystal ball almanac for a paper son on a paper path, 00:03:48.280 --> 00:03:52.330 align:middle line:84% a celestial divination in the back room of butcher 00:03:52.330 --> 00:03:57.430 align:middle line:84% or herbal shop or corner store like ours, 00:03:57.430 --> 00:04:00.790 align:middle line:84% where the till bell drifted back to Ng Ng, 00:04:00.790 --> 00:04:04.360 align:middle line:84% her wok kicking sparks off stove flame, 00:04:04.360 --> 00:04:10.240 align:middle line:84% or find me at my desk my father fashioned from Schlitz 12 00:04:10.240 --> 00:04:14.960 align:middle line:84% packs for weekend's homework, me copying out my name, 00:04:14.960 --> 00:04:17.890 align:middle line:84% a dotted line running through its center 00:04:17.890 --> 00:04:20.200 align:middle line:84% and not knowing the silences, not 00:04:20.200 --> 00:04:25.030 align:middle line:84% knowing then the cost of turning back to see. 00:04:25.030 --> 00:04:28.930 align:middle line:84% In today's news, US troops install the miles 00:04:28.930 --> 00:04:35.410 align:middle line:84% of border razor wire, so-called concertina for the coil that 00:04:35.410 --> 00:04:40.600 align:middle line:84% extends and flattens like the bellows of a squeeze box. 00:04:40.600 --> 00:04:44.320 align:middle line:84% Listen to everything all the time, 00:04:44.320 --> 00:04:48.220 align:middle line:84% and remind yourself when you are not listening, 00:04:48.220 --> 00:04:55.090 align:middle line:84% instructed Oliveros, a composer of sonospherics and a chi kung 00:04:55.090 --> 00:04:58.930 align:middle line:90% student of quantum physics. 00:04:58.930 --> 00:05:03.040 align:middle line:84% In practicing, she explained, I have 00:05:03.040 --> 00:05:08.100 align:middle line:84% experienced listening with the palms of my hand. 00:05:08.100 --> 00:05:12.000 align:middle line:90%