WEBVTT

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I was born in India, and I
lived in India for 11 years.

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And then I migrated
to Singapore,

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where my dad worked as a
water treatment engineer.

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And his work was to
translate salt water

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into sweet water, which I think
is a very romantic profession.

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And we lived through some
years of very complicated

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documentation, some
undocumented months,

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and I returned to Singapore--

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actually, so I migrated
from Singapore to the US

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when I was 18 to study poetry.

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And poetry became a way for me
to remain in the United States.

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I came in as a dependent
on a professional

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visa, which meant
I couldn't work.

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In order to gain an education,
I had to gain a student visa,

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and so on and so on, OK?

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So poetry became
my way of earning

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a livelihood, of paying my rent
and eating, which many of us

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know we need to survive.

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[LAUGHS] And then it so happened
that I returned to Singapore

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as a professor to teach poetry
back in one of my nations--

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and it's one of
my three nations.

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And there I conceived
a child, and it so

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happened that I
had to give birth

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to this child in Singapore.

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But I was an American citizen
giving birth in Singapore.

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And so I was labeled foreign
mother, which, I love it.

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And this is a poem about the
experience of giving birth

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as an American who was an Indian
in Singapore, which I was once

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a citizen of.

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And the poem is called "Hedges."

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You might know it.

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The curated, manicured
boundary between households

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in a neighborhood.

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And it has a quote
from Michel Serres,

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which I want to read first.

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"Through the skin, the
world and the body touch,

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defining their
common border (edge).

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Contingency means
mutual touching.

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Contingency means
mutual touching."

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First, there was a sea, and
then there was a knot of hair.

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First, there was a line,
and then there was a story.

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How do the dead
wait in this tunnel?

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This tomb of book and breast?

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Patient?

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One.

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At the consulate, the line
for birth certificates

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is the line for
death certificates.

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Was the child born
beyond a boundary?

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Was the boundary wrought
in gunmetal and green?

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When they pull her out,
the trundle of my pelvis

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rattles, but doesn't give way.

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In the prattle of the
operating theater,

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she arrives like
a slap backwards,

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fleeing the face, the palm
indigo smarting from flight.

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Our shared border is a
fist unfurling a red flag.

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Her, a thing pink
found in the maraud,

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taken as a peel is, further
and further from the fruit,

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until plum descends to plum,
until a sound long and lean

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turns into a kind of skin.

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Her, a thing inked,
fleeced by charter.

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Were the parents
held by the law?

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FS240

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Did they love in
the same language?

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DS1350

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They first lift serosa from
serosa, arouse all the roses,

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prick each thorn, hum
sub rosa a song known

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to someone born before you.

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aari ro ari raro

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Two.

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To pleach a tree, we
take the dead stem

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and braid it to a living
branch until a hedge thickens,

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Until the braids come undone,
and the schoolyard dusts black

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hair red,

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Until at the hospital
ward, my cries command

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the clouds to the window,

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Cumulus, alluvial, lunatic.

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Each breath quests a
gust, counts to five,

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makes a list for
the names of god,

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twin simoons strand
us both at this tear,

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where Earth parts from Earth.

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Zameen, our zikr, zikr our
partition awaking to daylight,

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Assembly from one many
e ovum pluribus, us, us,

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us, ovum pluribus us, us.

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Strung on suture, a flag
drying saffron and egg

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white and succulent
on a clothesline.

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Aloe is an organ.

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Saffron is an ovary.

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Patient's water
intact 48 hours later.

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Patient's water
intact 64 hours later.

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They sweep the membrane
of the water sac.

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They bring the sky
broom to enter my stoop.

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They bring the blocks of ice.

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Yes, I feel that.

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Place them against my chest.

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Yes, I feel that.

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She's ready.

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Yes, I feel that.

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Unfold the shroud.

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Yes, I feel that.

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Staunch the incision.

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Yes, I feel that.

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And sign here.

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aari ro ari raro

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Three.

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Until I was 11, I slept
inside my mother's passport.

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In that photograph,
I wear the face

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which drank the wet
moon's horns and all.

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And I have the eyes of a
deer crossing the Pacific.

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Two stitches on a single stave.

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Stitch, stitch, this
will form a good scar.

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This will be a ring of roses.

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A pocket full of passport poses.

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Do you have proof of identity?

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[LAUGHS]

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She is her mother's child,
as I am my mother's child,

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and as she is her mother's
child, and I am my mother's.

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aari ro ari raro

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Hang the towels.

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Beat the rugs.

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Skim the way.

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Swaddle the archipelagos.

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We are coming home with
these bundled papers.

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We have fledged
ourselves over this line.

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Paper cranes that we are
in this bleached sky.

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This is the plot.

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As in, we now have a story.

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As in, I picked it red.

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Where you and I meet
on a grid of wet.

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As in, I have made a notarized
copy of all our feathers.

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