[CHUCKLES]
So I would like to close with new work.
This is a litany.
Get ready.
It is the month of Lent, is it not?
It has begun.
I was raised a Catholic, and I've had conversations
with very amazing thinkers and artists
here about the impact of Catholicism on one's identity
and on one's aesthetics.
And I was saying to them that the figure of Mary, the Virgin
Mary, has been very important to me,
because in most historical accounts of this woman,
we have good reason to believe that she was
a very young person, a girl, and we
have very good reasons to consider this figure moving
through Nazareth and Jerusalem in the contested
lands of Palestine.
And I've also been thinking about the diminishing rights
of women and girls in terms of their reproduction
and the consent that they're capable of offering now
under the law.
And I've also been thinking about the devastation of gender
affirming health that our trans friends will not have access to.
And I've been thinking a lot about the phrase "Hail Mary"
as a Hail Mary pass and the prayer Hail Mary.
So I'm thinking about the Hail Mary
pass as a desperate attempt, an act
that you take at a moment in the game, knowing full well
that it might not work, but you still have to try it.
And I have started thinking about that phrase as a resistant
phrase.
And growing up, when I used to say
the rosary, the line, the opening lines of the verse,
Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you,
I always hear it as Hail Mary, full of grace,
the law is with you.
And so now I'm thinking about what it means
when the law is not with you.
And so this closing piece is a litany [CHUCKLES] at the pulpit,
and it's called The Angelical Salutation of Every Girl
in History.
Hail the wild grasses and her legs scratching the blades.
Green against brown against green against brown.
The slash burn of the thicket, thin shins flanking wind.
Hail the graze and cut sine curve of her calf sailing
in sword.
Hail she who lets us hear the crack of her heel against Earth.
Plectrum strumming the ground.
Hail the hair parted in the middle, braided from the crown,
trailing the wings of the shoulders.
Hail the heave and the hoist of arms that
raised her fists to the air.
Hail the great foist of her desire, its ballast of iron,
its rattle of gravel.
Hail the weight of her want, the thrusting void where all of her
should be.
Hail her running to be in her place.
Let breath arrive as mainsail unfurling at high tide.
Let her spine be a boom, the steel
yowl from the deepest bottom.
Hail the yawl of a torso bounding the stairs up
to the mezzanine, then to the terrace, then the skyline.
Hail her now fleet footed and frothing for an unwieldy freedom
denied and denied again.
Hail every crease and feather that bends and drags,
darts and stunts under hedge and harrow,
charting the cosine of the grabbed snack
and this tossed book heckle and hell.
Past every unwanted hey.
Hail the fumble and the flail of her fugitive gait.
Let her flip her scab back for fresh hide.
Hail her body full throated fledge, her piracy of time,
the hours never offered.
Hail her standing at the back of the line,
still in the storm of a scolding.
Her pulse racing to stop the clocks
and part the reddest air ahead, and seize the reddest dread
within.
Liberator of her own flesh.
Hail the girl full of doors.
Hail the girl smuggling herself through the border.
The she still holding a single thread from cradle to grave.
Her refusal of the engraved.
Let the medicine bring her to her.
Let the fat feel the needle.
Let the skin pink and plump.
Hail the girl who rolled the corridors
and chose the exits from her gender.
Hail she who walked backwards, laughing into every room that
shouted her out.
Hail her pissing in her own dirt.
Her haunches sprung from red dust.
Hail her reload and her cock, her breastless armor,
her scratch and dart.
Hail the wiggle eked from the frozen pose.
Hail her hands, fingering the pebble in her pocket.
Thumb bitten into a crescent moon.
Hail her boyhood and the sun smitten swoon of afternoons.
Hail the cuticle peeled back to reveal blood.
Who let the curl be chewed under the shelling
or the staring match with someone who has lived
louder and longer than she has.
Hail her spirit, stiff as a board,
light as a feather in the archway.
Let her heels grind into the tiles and push the walls apart.
Hail her M, hail her F, hail her M, Hail her own mark
in every form feel letter.
Let the prairie take over.
Hail the ruffled pleat of her pulled smooth, the spit shine
and slicked back, the tight collar
and the hip carved by strap.
Hail her chin pointed and stubborn.
The grating molar and lupine canine.
Let her sound high.
Her North Star pinned to the heaven.
Hail her arms stretching to find the East.
Hail the shoulder roll, the hair squall.
Hail the lilt of her lips and her little purse.
Hail the hair flip, her eye roll, her drawl drape,
her tongue against the gum and the stretch and yank and tug.
Hail the globe bulbed with breath.
Hail the nervous chuckle, every bud and bronzed shape.
Hail her battering heart against the chests gate.
Let her bolt from bloodline.
Let her bolt from its hail.
Hail waistband and Bric-a-brac pancakes and syrup tracks.
Gum pack and sandal strap.
Patty cake and clapbacks.
Back slaps.
Tic Tacs and hair ties.
Lip gloss and headphones.
Headbands and backpacks.
Keychains and bookmarks.
Board games and exams.
Hail Valentine's twine, cotton, and iodine.
Band-aids and hopscotch.
Skateboards, stickers.
Hail pedal pumps.
Puddle jumps.
Hail her hair in the drain and tub scum.
Hail her stern rearing in flight.
Hail the slapping bellow of her thighs.
Let her light meadow and marrow.
Hail her hips and churn that slide
this child passed the chide and onward.
Cookie stealer, scissor snapper, paper cutter, gummy sculptor.
Hail the leaper, the empress of the dash.
Hail the stump and stumble, the drop and roll.
Hail the crestfall.
Let her feel the hard sinking stillness before her uprising.
Hail her stubborn glare.
Hail the mutiny of her eyes.
Hail the lambast of every sky.
Hail the clearing.
Hail her yes.
Hail the girl who carried the fever in her head.
Hail the girl full of grace.
You are with you, now and at the hour of your death.
Amen
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you.