WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.000 align:middle line:90% 00:00:01.000 --> 00:00:02.060 align:middle line:90% This next poem-- 00:00:02.060 --> 00:00:04.560 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:00:04.560 --> 00:00:07.120 align:middle line:84% --this next poem features a state of matter 00:00:07.120 --> 00:00:11.840 align:middle line:84% that you don't often experience here-- ice. 00:00:11.840 --> 00:00:14.120 align:middle line:84% And the ice in here is, in fact, a state 00:00:14.120 --> 00:00:18.400 align:middle line:90% of matter, not the other ICE. 00:00:18.400 --> 00:00:20.460 align:middle line:84% So the title of this is an ice is a body. 00:00:20.460 --> 00:00:22.800 align:middle line:90% It's a pandemic poem. 00:00:22.800 --> 00:00:24.760 align:middle line:90% An ice is a body. 00:00:24.760 --> 00:00:29.120 align:middle line:84% Like all things, it begins as water and ends as water. 00:00:29.120 --> 00:00:33.640 align:middle line:84% As water, it may become vapor, steam droplets on a window, 00:00:33.640 --> 00:00:37.440 align:middle line:84% a heaviness in the air we bring into our lungs. 00:00:37.440 --> 00:00:41.360 align:middle line:84% It may become dew or dog piss in the grass, a body's 00:00:41.360 --> 00:00:46.040 align:middle line:84% nourishment, or excreta, residue from the time when it once 00:00:46.040 --> 00:00:47.560 align:middle line:90% had a body. 00:00:47.560 --> 00:00:52.440 align:middle line:84% From a time when we too had bodies, embodiments of the air 00:00:52.440 --> 00:00:54.660 align:middle line:84% we breathed, when we were ourselves 00:00:54.660 --> 00:00:57.820 align:middle line:84% bodies, when we would breathe in one another's company, 00:00:57.820 --> 00:01:01.080 align:middle line:84% could feel that warmth and take it within ourselves 00:01:01.080 --> 00:01:03.840 align:middle line:90% as though it were ours to own. 00:01:03.840 --> 00:01:06.840 align:middle line:84% As though we'd become the vapor ourselves and the world 00:01:06.840 --> 00:01:10.920 align:middle line:84% as vaporous as this empty park fogged in November. 00:01:10.920 --> 00:01:15.040 align:middle line:84% As the gray smoke of an animal at stride, which itself was 00:01:15.040 --> 00:01:17.520 align:middle line:90% a body at the edge of shadow. 00:01:17.520 --> 00:01:21.120 align:middle line:84% The body of smoke streaking the abandoned ballpark. 00:01:21.120 --> 00:01:22.760 align:middle line:90% A creature of smoke. 00:01:22.760 --> 00:01:26.480 align:middle line:84% Creature from creare: A thing created, 00:01:26.480 --> 00:01:30.280 align:middle line:84% a residue of creation gliding the field, parting 00:01:30.280 --> 00:01:32.600 align:middle line:90% reality as it went. 00:01:32.600 --> 00:01:36.440 align:middle line:84% And we were also that smoke, my dog and me, 00:01:36.440 --> 00:01:41.080 align:middle line:84% witnessing a promise dragged in the creature's wake. 00:01:41.080 --> 00:01:45.040 align:middle line:84% It moved as though inevitable, as though a piece of one dark 00:01:45.040 --> 00:01:48.160 align:middle line:90% had broken off to join another. 00:01:48.160 --> 00:01:49.720 align:middle line:84% And somewhere along the tree line, 00:01:49.720 --> 00:01:52.100 align:middle line:90% we joined the darkness with it. 00:01:52.100 --> 00:01:55.260 align:middle line:84% Our consciousness, like a mist that trailed in its wake, 00:01:55.260 --> 00:01:58.400 align:middle line:84% trailed from our minds as though outside of ourselves. 00:01:58.400 --> 00:02:02.800 align:middle line:84% As though these fields slathered in dew and the piss of dogs 00:02:02.800 --> 00:02:06.320 align:middle line:84% had condensed into a fog that we then breathed in, 00:02:06.320 --> 00:02:10.039 align:middle line:90% the creature, my dog and myself. 00:02:10.039 --> 00:02:12.810 align:middle line:84% This fog even the street lights struggled 00:02:12.810 --> 00:02:15.930 align:middle line:84% to pierce, which joined with the heat in our lungs 00:02:15.930 --> 00:02:21.330 align:middle line:84% as we exhaled and became a lonesomeness overtaking us all. 00:02:21.330 --> 00:02:23.450 align:middle line:84% And the more alone we became, the more 00:02:23.450 --> 00:02:29.050 align:middle line:84% we steamed outward, as this ice might steam in its tray 00:02:29.050 --> 00:02:31.450 align:middle line:90% with the freezer door open. 00:02:31.450 --> 00:02:36.210 align:middle line:84% And isn't the city in November an ice about to form? 00:02:36.210 --> 00:02:42.690 align:middle line:84% Doesn't it all go back to 0 in the end, as all things must? 00:02:42.690 --> 00:02:49.010 align:middle line:84% Born in the tray, the ice comes to rest in the glass. 00:02:49.010 --> 00:02:49.870 align:middle line:90% This very glass. 00:02:49.870 --> 00:02:52.530 align:middle line:90% Not this very glass. 00:02:52.530 --> 00:02:56.130 align:middle line:84% This very glass with the gin and the lime wedge. 00:02:56.130 --> 00:02:58.550 align:middle line:84% This glass that I held 20 years ago 00:02:58.550 --> 00:03:03.370 align:middle line:84% when the future felt like a vow, motherless but possible, which 00:03:03.370 --> 00:03:05.890 align:middle line:84% has become instead this year of pestilence 00:03:05.890 --> 00:03:08.190 align:middle line:84% of the late night YouTube videos, 00:03:08.190 --> 00:03:11.590 align:middle line:84% newly christened freighters sliding off their blocks, 00:03:11.590 --> 00:03:15.650 align:middle line:84% crashing heavily off blocks into the shipbuilders canal, 00:03:15.650 --> 00:03:19.490 align:middle line:84% which I'll always consider a kind of birth. 00:03:19.490 --> 00:03:24.090 align:middle line:84% All that tremor and fulfillment, all that welded steel bobbing 00:03:24.090 --> 00:03:27.570 align:middle line:84% in the channel, perfect gibbous of water breaking over 00:03:27.570 --> 00:03:33.330 align:middle line:84% the banks, because even an ice cube once had a mother, 00:03:33.330 --> 00:03:35.630 align:middle line:84% once cradled in the protection of the tray, 00:03:35.630 --> 00:03:41.570 align:middle line:84% just as I twice unmothered was once a body grown in another's. 00:03:41.570 --> 00:03:46.610 align:middle line:84% Immersed in the waters produced by a body, a little condensation 00:03:46.610 --> 00:03:52.130 align:middle line:84% of cells and potential now drinking to forget 00:03:52.130 --> 00:03:55.930 align:middle line:84% or drinking to encounter a version of the self 00:03:55.930 --> 00:03:57.770 align:middle line:84% as a smoke drifting the tree line, 00:03:57.770 --> 00:04:00.170 align:middle line:84% as a fleeting streak in the night, which 00:04:00.170 --> 00:04:02.550 align:middle line:84% will come to stillness at some point, 00:04:02.550 --> 00:04:07.210 align:middle line:84% either violently or in peace, either witnessed or unseen 00:04:07.210 --> 00:04:11.290 align:middle line:84% and release its waters over the rippling pelt of the Earth. 00:04:11.290 --> 00:04:13.675 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:04:13.675 --> 00:04:18.930 align:middle line:90% 00:04:18.930 --> 00:04:21.360 align:middle line:90% It is important to hydrate. 00:04:21.360 --> 00:04:22.000 align:middle line:90%