WEBVTT

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I brought two new poems,
two brand new poems

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that I'm going to make
myself be brave to read.

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I've never shown
these to anybody,

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never sent them out,
never read them out loud.

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So I hope that something
comes after this book,

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and I hope that this has
something to do with it.

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This poem is about people
that go missing in your life.

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Not just estranged, but
literally go missing.

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So it's about one of my cousins
and about a high school friend.

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And it centers around
Dante of the Divine Comedy.

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"The Thorn of Dante."

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One of the final
acts of Dante's life

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was to place a single
thorn into his ear.

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He was invited to lunch
by the Doge in Venice

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where he was sent to settle
a dispute about salt.

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The thorn was pulled from the
flank of a small baked fish.

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When the Doge asked
Dante why he did this,

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He explained that this
fish was from the Adriatic

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Sea in which his father died,

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So he hoped the
thorn had a message

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to deliver from he who
Dante had lost at age 10.

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By this logic, if I wanted to
hear once again from my cousin

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Karma missing for half my life,

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Older than the rest of
us, but always kind,

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To whom my parents
would not give money

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when she'd knock on the
door at the oddest hour

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of the oddest day
to ask for cash.

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I'd hold my ear to
a dime to hear where

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she is, if she is still alive,

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Or to know where Biko
is, who the police wanted

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to turn to salt.

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So he vanished when
we were teenagers

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Who once told me he was
scared of his own gun,

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That he felt sometimes
it could move on its own.

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Decades later, his brother
showed me a wooden wine stopper

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he claimed Biko had made with
his hands and vaguely mentioned

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Texas.

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For him, I'd listen
deeply to the grain

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of that wood I imagined
he machined while reciting

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Shakespeare like he did as we
pulled weeds from my father

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in his fields.

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The news of the gun is
found within what's left,

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Is what Dante wanted to be true
before his blood's last turn

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near the marshes of Comacchio.

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