 So I wrote this poem a few years ago in response to the murders of Eric Garner and Michael Brown. I have two young sons, and I was wondering if I was optimistic about being a father at this moment in American history given our race relations, and I wound up getting published in the San Francisco Chronicle two days after the 2016 presidential election, and it was actually reprinted in the Chronicle a couple of weeks ago to coincide with the midterm election. And the title is called America, I Do Not Call Your Name Without Hope, and it's a title that I took from a Pablo Neruda poem, and Neruda wrote this poem in the late 40s, early 50s, in response to the dictatorial regimes taking over South America, and of course he's referring to Latin America, South America, but I imported his title. America I Do Not Call Your Name Without Hope, after Neruda. America I Do Not Call Your Name Without Hope, not even when you lay your knife against my throat or lace my hands behind my back. The cuffs connecting us like two outlaws trying to escape history's white horse. It's heavy whip, a pistol shot in the ear, lost land. This is a song for the scars on your back, for your blistered feet and beautiful watch. It is for your windmills, your magic machines, for your fists. It is for your wagon of blood, for your dogs and their teeth of fire, for your sons and the smoke in their hearts. This is for your verbs, your long lurk, your whir. This is for you and your fear, your tar, for the white heat in your skin and for your blue bones that one day may sing. This is for your singing. This is for the past, but not for what's past. This is for daybreak and backbreak for dreams and for darkness. This song is not for your fight, but it is a song for fighting. It is a song of flame, but not for burning. It is a song out of breath, but a plea for breathing. It is the song I will sing when you knock on my door, my son's name in your mouth. Thank you. This next poem I wrote earlier in the year, you may remember back in May I think there was a bombing in the U.K. during an Ariana Grande concert and that very day my father began dialysis, that's actually happened last year, and that the dialysis would eventually do his death. He died in December. I think it was thinking about the confluence of public and private tragedies. This poem is called Threatity, and a Threatity is an elegy. One of the motifs of Thomas' project was that we were supposed to listen to music as we looked at his images, and this musical component was also undergirding this poem. This poem was also in the form of a Pantum, which originally was a Malaysian form in which it's written in four line stanzas. The first and third lines of the first stanzas become the second and fourth line of the next stanza, so every line in the poem is repeated twice, but you'll see it changes a little bit. It's called Threatity. I don't want to be the blood on the blade, but the world is a walking war, and every inch of air is a wound. Distant angel, your wings are wide, but the world is a walking war. Our metaphors of flight are fluxed, distant. Angel, your wings are wide enough to spread the skylit stars. Our metaphors of flight, our fluxed lives fall into emptiness, into echo. Cut enough to spread the skylit stars of worship, the tender stigmata of lives. Fall into emptiness, into echo. Let it stains on our skin. Let this be our form of worship, the tender stigmata of regret. The plot of this life leaves its stains on our skin. Let this be our form of punishment, not a bomb at a concert, regret. The plot of this life leaves its shrapnel on every page in every footnote of punishment, not a bomb at a concert, not my father on dialysis, not this shrapnel, on every page in every footnote the citations of our dying. Tell me who gets to live, not my father on dialysis, not this man, his suit of tubes and bones, the citations of our dying. Tell me who gets to live in the light of their own breaking, if not this man, his suit of tubes and bones, like bodies inside machines of motion, bright in the light of their own breaking. If not this, then what? The son asks the father, twinned in like bodies. Inside machines of motion, bright blue embers blaze us, bowing into the now. Then what? The son asks. The father, twinned in this life and the next, ghosts our presence. Blue embers blaze us. Bowing into the now of the riptide, I'm like one treading water, drowning in this life and the next. Ghosts our presence, as brief, as dangerous, as atrial flutter of the riptide. I'm like one treading water, drowning in the spaces between, a new kind of infinity, as brief, as dangerous, as dangerous as atrial flutter in my father's heart. But I am a swung sword in the spaces between a new kind of infinity. I don't want to be the blood on the blade in my father's heart, but I am a swung sword and every inch of air is a wound. So this last poem is the poem I wrote in response to Thomas's images. And as Thomas said, the image that I responded to made me think of churches, I suppose, at least the design of the windows. And also Thomas's work was an inspiration for this poem. The notion of marks, of signs, of bells, those things all sort of have religious significations, and I was thinking about just the similarity between the mark of writing and the mark of drawing and what does it mean to make a mark. Anyway, so thanks, Thomas, for inviting me to be part of this wonderful project. It's great to read with you, Jack, and I'm real honored to read with Lee Young. And the title of this poem is Nocturne, and then the subtitle is La Siare Sonare, which if you are a musician, know anything about music. It's Latin for literally do not tampon or literally let it ring. So instead of like tamping down the strings on an instrument, you sort of let it ring out, Nocturne. Sharp shard of another day, another post-dawn, another wreckage of dew and dew drop, the whole shellacked as if glass were on the inside of everything. Even the air between sky and eye, the entire world waiting to crack along its fractures, falling the way the hours fall into their own dispersal. How, we ask, can so much break all at once? Somewhere, a fire burns like a star along the edge of what we cannot know, and yet still we rise like the flame of a bent candle into the empty cathedral of our routine. Long day, longer night, the old cul-de-sac of sorrow and silence. We circle around our loss like a shell on a grain of sand. What if just once we were not erased by our own absence? Oh lost pilgrim, what if your journey begins with this word? What if a song written for you long ago can now only be heard? What if someone whispers your name in her nightly prayer? Suppose inside every prayer is another prayer, within every word another word, an infinite ladder of letters always climbing back into each other. And suppose within every song is another song, inside each note another note, a second sound, a secret sound. And what if within all these signs are more signs, and it's inside each line a line of lines, a furrow of lines, a field of lines. I believe we draw and are drawn into the ink of our unlived lives. I believe we are echo and trace, both string and bow. Listen. When the light lays down its knives and darkness, the weariest maestro picks up its baton. You will know the music the dead left you has begun. Off in the distance, beyond the choir of cricket, thrum and wind whir, beyond the triage of traffic slog and the dark drone of device, there is nothing but the past asleep on its black pillow. And you, keep listening. The entire world may go silent, but the little bell of the self is ready to ring. Thank you.