WEBVTT

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Hi, everybody.

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Thank you for coming out on
this chilly desert night.

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It's really a
thrill and an honor

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to be here to read
with Alison, to be

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the guest of the Poetry Center.

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And I'm just very,
very happy to be here.

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The first poem that I'm going to
read is called "I Just Checked,

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We Live 2676 Miles Apart."

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I checked as we were
talking, two sisters,

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one busy caller from the car.

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Signal strength always rising
and falling as if heavy weather

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or buffering.

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Or maybe just like breath,
like intimacy itself, smack

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in the middle of a story,
or a medical report,

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or Lyme statistics, or falling
aunts on ancient porches.

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Her voice vanishes and I
check for disconnection,

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but see our unspooling seconds,
the silence just a glitch.

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Then there she is further into
the story, the aunt revived,

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the dog safe from toxic grapes.

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The tally of seconds
still racks up someone.

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Something is counting.

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Keeping track.

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Not me so much wastrel of days.

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Not even sure if I
tuned out or lost her.

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Wastrel of our bond sometimes.

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Forgive me, I never
mean to lose the thread.

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A hidden series of ones and
zeros measures off our time

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together, and sometimes I watch
it roll while I also do listen.

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I am listening, my mind torn
between how fast it's gone,

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mesmerizing hourglass of bits
and what she's telling me

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about a man whose mind
is actually dying faster

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and faster, her new husband.

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Too soon, too young.

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I am feeling their helplessness
and grief and my sister's

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lonely, heavy lift.

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And also thinking how my
son calls me the sieve,

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since I come up
short when he asks

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if I remember what
a movie scene,

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a crucial college tete a tete.

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I can't right now recall an
actual example of something

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he has sought from his
mother, made of mesh.

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I'm still picturing
my sister's car

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on some twisty
forest road, numbly

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aware of all that's
passing through me,

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insufficiently absorbed.

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My son also sent some stats
about how much time a mom

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and son can reasonably
expect to spend together

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if they meet, say,
three times a year,

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holidays and visits,
and how many books

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we each have left if we-- slow
readers-- both read 10 or 12

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per year.

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I want to just collapse my
attention onto the story coming

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from that many miles away.

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Even though I'm afraid of it,
I want more than my likely

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200-ish, if we're
lucky days with her,

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my remaining 35 weeks face to
face with my own kids dotted

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here and there across
the actuarial table.

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Should the Irish Thriller
in the bedroom really

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be one of my last 300 books?

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How many letters will I write?

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How many almond cakes,
intracoastal waterways,

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how many (if any)
grandkid hours?

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Her voice wavers, naming
what today is more

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lost than even yesterday.

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Her sweetheart's face riven
by knowing what he's losing,

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her headlong presence
in the fight for him.

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His best last days or years
uncountable unkeepable.

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Her keeping watch, keeping up
well past when he can tell.

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Her voice is dis- and
reassembled by the grid.

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Or no: the
electromagnetic field.

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And it comes here so almost
exactly like it would

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if she were sitting on the
couch right next to me.

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I press my cheek
into her ether cheek,

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though of course she doesn't
feel what even is it.

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Glass caress.

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