[AUDIENCE CLAPPING]
Yeah.
All right.
This is the two poem warning.
I don't know if it's going to get any happier, though.
But you've made it this far.
"Up the road."
--bakery, pizza place with large parking lot,
county middle school/high school complex,
raiments of the working class, driveway after driveway.
If you come from the south,
come slow, take the business road, don't miss
our exit, a pill or two.
Take as much money as you can
home with two bedrooms, one for your daughters.
Give them anything they can imagine.
In this place
you come up on coffee and screams, writing out
the morning, a tiny history.
What institution
did your family lean against?
Big engine of unions,
my grandfather, an official for the Democrats.
Brown newspaper photograph,
hair slicked back and ice
lines the street as I write these.
The streets should be shorter
sentences between us.
We could string
aren't you curious you beautiful
breath, sky, hills not too far
from now, the rain sounds like paper crumbling.
Bring your daughters to this place.
tell them there was something special,
tell them we were something special,
our struggle has too few chroniclers.