WEBVTT

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I think the next poem I want
to do is a poem about my mom.

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My father passed away.

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He was a farmer, and he passed
away on the farm in an accident

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when I was 25.

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And so I spent a lot of my
poetry career writing about him,

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like eulogizing him.

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And I feel like writing
has kind of become

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the way that I talk to him.

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And so between my
two parents, it's

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a very lopsided pile of poems
between my mom and my dad.

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My mom has always
been a steady presence

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in my life, happy,
healthy, working.

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And so I think I might take
her for granted a little bit

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in terms of writing about her.

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So when I was going
to write this book,

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I thought, OK, I have to
have a poem for my mom.

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A farm wife has some--

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you get pressed into
service into some ways

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because farming has
no health insurance.

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And so the wife usually
has to have some job that

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has health insurance.

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And also it kind of comes along
with doing whatever the husband

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farmer can't, won't do.

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And so a lot of times I think
housewives become accountants,

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like they keep the books for
the farm, amongst other things.

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And if a truck
driver calls in sick,

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sometimes you got
to drive the truck.

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And so this is a
poem about the ways

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that my mom filled
in the gaps that had

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to be filled in my childhood.

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This is necessity as the mother.

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Instead of a knob
on the grain truck's

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gearshift, a wad of paper towel.

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Instead of a house
key, a credit card.

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My mother kept the books.

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There was always a bird
trapped in the chimney.

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She and I lifted dead
kittens born in an abandoned

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boat, fallen into its keel.

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There was always
some killing to do.

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My mother made herself into the
Picasso of health insurance.

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Who else?

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Our fields were full of
futures and we hauled them in.

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Her father was not
the only welder.

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She cut the tip of her
finger off and held us.

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The house almost burned.

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I gave away our good sheets to
stop bleeding at a wreck on 45.

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At church we looked
like other families.

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No one could tell
the vastness we

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tried to explain ourselves to.

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She arranged our silences,
filed them alphabetically.

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Her husband died.

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Later that day,
her father did too.

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She balanced the books,
remarried, succeeded the losses,

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invented a life yet untitled.

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What else?

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She surely asked the water
softener, the Hicks gas propane

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tank.

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Nothing else answered
the zeros in her ledger,

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Each stitch's X.

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Nothing else.

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