And take my Little Marco Rubio moment here.
[LAUGHS]
Thanks for laughing at my joke.
Tyler, I appreciate you.
[LAUGHS]
I want to read one from Soft Science
from my second book, which I haven't read in a long time,
but Cameron was reminding me of this one earlier today.
And man, the news, especially out of Minneapolis,
but everywhere has just been really on my heart,
and breaking my heart every morning when I wake up.
So this one's called You're So Paranoid.
It's for Jose, who is a guy who I
knew when I was living in Vermont briefly, who
got deported back to Guatemala.
A wall of cops moves like a wall of water on a barge, no beauty.
A wall of iron swallows the woman who falls to the ground,
and keeps falling.
There's a video.
The picture stays intact again.
It's not pretty, meaning it's hard to watch.
When a poet says, we have to keep our eyes open,
I know who he's talking to.
I don't listen.
I listen long enough to hate him.
If I say the woman dragged by her hair.
If I compare it, I witnessed, meaning stood by the window,
meaning shuddered.
Let hand fall gently over lips.
Pulled coat tight, tighter.
A wall of cops bucks like a frightened boar.
If I describe it, will it speak?
If I say it came furtive and dressed in red,
the cops think cop thoughts.
The cops move.
They walk like a walk, like an economy,
which, after all, is a fairy bucking with hunger,
not pretty, not picture.
I follow the Border Patrol agent through the airport,
thinking fast thoughts, bloodfast, bloodhound steps.
He buys a burrito.
If I say he stood alive in line.
And my friends are afraid to leave their bathrooms.
My friends who I love and, love and.
My friends, who eat from plates, who plug
cords into machines for singing.
If I say a wall of men standing on my friends' necks,
if I describe it.
My friends, who slice plums illegally
on soccer fields, whose knees move like knees into the grass.
If I name the grass.
If I call sweet liquor and smoke.
If I say cloy.
If the child shrieks as she swung.
If the sun.
If August.
If blue juice, will it talk?
The cops are thinking cop thoughts.
They move with a wall inside them, answering machines
answering.
The window rattles, and I fall to my knees.
If I hoist my friends up so they can be seen.
By whom?
If I say they are beautiful.
If I compare.
If the sun touches the glass, and I feel it.
I try to hear the Border Patrol agent order his food.
I listen long enough, then walk to my gate.
I feel ashamed, and put it in my sleeve.
And later, I make it a picture, like everything.
The wall moves like a fairy, like a woman through an airport,
like a wall.
If I say I watch the woman brought down by her hair,
and watched the woman cry.
And cried.
If the storm skips my door again.
If I leave to kill another goat.
If I promise my crop.
If I paint the wall up and down in sacred W's.
If I make it any color, will someone put it in her mouth?
If I close my eyes, imagine it.
If I imagine it.
If I think of something to say?
The cop speaks, and I call a plum into his mouth.
It doesn't shut him up.
The cop kneels in the grass below my friends.
My friends crowned with August and salt.
My marigold, my wave.
They laugh like a branch laughs.
They make machines for singing.
If I say a palm in the small of the back.
If I say sun-warmed glass.
If I say sunglass breaking.
Open the gate.
Thanks.
[APPLAUSE]