 There are a lot of you out there. Thank you for coming in today for this reading. Thanks to all the 10 years of litquake. Wow, 10 years of really hard work. So thanks to all of you who helped to make this happen. When I was trying to decide what to read today, I spent the last year doing heavy, heavy work on both of those editing projects from the Fish House Anthology and the Black Nature Anthology, which is four centuries of African-American nature poetry. And they're all in the works and almost finished. And I just got the galleys for my own book last week and looked at my own poems for the first time in a while and was pleased by them. So I thought I would, in fact, share my rediscovery with you a little bit today. So this book, Suck on the Marrow, is set in the mid-19th century along the eastern seaboard. And I'm just gonna read two poems that introduce two of the characters. Taming Shad, two things he didn't understand. Even after she let him pull her up into the wide hug of the Sycamore branches. And after she took to tying her hair in red ribbons, he used Sunday wages to buy for her. What had Molly's little nod meant that first day her body, a blue bag, gripped in one hand, ran across his shadow? Laundry day, so she was busy. But something made her take time to answer a question he hadn't realized he'd already asked. That was one thing he couldn't understand. What made her nod yes to a dusty bruise of a man just walked up to the Jackson Place after how long trotting behind his newest master and his master's paint. The other thing was why. After all those nights setting the creases in his thumbs, the lobes of his ears, the direction Sweat took running off his belly, she stayed away from him until the morning glories that had sprung open in his eyes closed again. Did she have to remind him? Wasn't nothing to be seen that he could look after. The truly inhumane act or kindness. When she was just two buds in a dream of sway, Molly had a hope thought that told her she would be someone in whose presence men could try to be more than themselves. But she's 16 now. She was in his arms the night before and because there was a moment when the stroke of his grace overwhelmed her, she is still there now. And even now, barely a sleep thought away from how Shad called her name to sound like settling down in her was his left foot following his right foot into the craft that would harbor him. Molly understands it is only his body he needed to save and saving it for her had nothing to do with grace. There will be nothing but hurt for days unless she reaches over and to the knots beside his spine applies the plush press of her thumbs and soothing him that way grants some relief. And I'll close with a newer poem. Before her heart, a mechanical aperture closed. Her heart, a mechanical aperture opened. She told her stomach, honey, be still. She told her teeth and her cheeks and her tongue all the squabbling was quail close at hand. Her heart, a perennial shrub persisted. She'd been waiting. She'd been waiting. She'd look forward to this. She told her wrist and her waist and her ankles all that rustling was quail in the rushes. To the skin on her left arm, keep watch. To her lungs, prepare all your rooms. Her heart deciduous bloomed. She'd breakfasted on rye toast spread with a hope sauce of bees and of thistle. She'd been waiting. She'd been waiting. In her rucksack, she tended the first crush of olives and nearly transparent, delicious meat so rare should she share her heart that tide pool would flood. She'd been waiting. She'd been waiting. She told the pit of her navel and the peaks of her nipples that cooing with quail coming near. The call was a response she'd expected all the days she'd look forward to this. Though her heart, brookbed, was damned, she kept two small thieves in their sockets alert. She commandeered all the rafts in her spine. She told her heart, take everything. When he handed his hand to her hand and the bevy, beautiful in the bushes, flew. Thank you. Thank you.