 His poems have appeared in Generations, Cape Cod Review, Crate, Gesture, Rhino, and The Collogist. Please welcome Dan Lau. Thank you for having me, Radar. Thank you, Michelle. Pat yourselves on the back. There's a tool concert, but you're here. I have a few poems. No particular order. I'm kind of in a disjunctive mood, so I don't know what's going to happen. The first one is titled, technology, almost this all. Proposition, utter love, utter wings, utter anything, but what you're about to say, stop. Tide pools, blood to the head, a face flush, ravaged chemical, these two ab. First, the kissing lids flutter open than the mouth. Slackness, a dry basin, out escapes the air, slow popping the sand trap and release revision. On the side of the cliff of a cryptomeria begs the wind to relieve its weight. One limb, it says, one limb and solace. Evaluation, such pretty, pretty pink lungs, sponges, but your block garland's still allowing passing and passing through. It reminds me of your mouth, thick, lovely lips, hips, thin, sharp, beautiful little machine. Each part for what it does done so well, but yet, perhaps mere calibration, a proper cog, the thread cut new for the bolt, tissue there for simple exchanges, convert, extract, ferment, break down, and all of us fall away what after, what after our task of breathing each other, intention. The steel over steel lying as if smelted from the same fire familiar. This train, this dull pair of wheel and rail, so familiar they only hiss, one turning over the other, leaving one portion behind to find more length. More rail, different, a new curve, a straightaway, our bodies above gliding over familiarity, over smooth metals and crushed pennies. This train coming and coming where, meeting what? A hum past windswept trees, one stripped of bark on one side, one stripped of limb for its ability to deal its unwillingness to uproot accompaniment. Sea urchin, dry, rootless furniture adorns the sand. Husks, horseshoe crabs, frozen in their desiccation in perpetuity, always almost about to beat its tail into the dry grit. All of them, the seaweed, the driftwood, the turnskull, occupying, whitening to each unnoticeable, prideless, free from connectors or reaction, without cause or requirement, each one almost thistle, a bed of pine needle, cicada shell. The next poem, I don't know, I've been seeing a lot of transitions and movements in San Francisco, and it's been really weird. And that's what I'm going to leave you with before I hear this. February. In front of the third house on the south side of the block, things began to accumulate. First came the easier things. Lamps, pre-box items, stacks of newspapers followed by mirrors and sun-bleached jello posters, each one possessing a distinct frame from the next. The sweaty, bull-bodied middle-aged men in green T-shirts, working at an even pace, filing in and out of the threshold like ants. Each man pulling carry-on outside to the curb, all these pieces of collateral, history of a life gathered into neat little heaps, the French press, the rest of a coffee service, metal this and that's from the kitchen, broken plastic things, a VCR, a gently worn DVD player, boxes of blank cassette tape still taught in their shrink wrap, a jar of string or twine or anything material, long and pliable, recently folded tablecloths, doily stack-like pancakes resting on a red enamel stool, marred like a mottled egg, patches of dark gray showing through. The neighbors come, first the ones next door to 569 Webster, then a few hours later the ones down the street. They happen upon it. Mounds of plastic, the regal wood, their eyes follow the men trailing in from where they've never been and out to what they've known. They've taken down the wreath and placed it next to the wreath that year. The tenant decided to go plastic. What a juxtaposition. The skin of the place removed now, they begin to pull the furniture. First four, no five green leather armchairs, scaled from age, meet new air. The dining set, first the leaves come, then the pedestal table with the long gouge as if someone struck it with a fire poker. Vases from the bookshelf, the book bundled with rough tawny twine, gifts. Soon others come and ask the same question neighbors asked before when the men responded just doing their job. The same job they do once a month, if not more. The passerby start to mill, start to ask more questions. The comments, we barely saw him in the daylight. Now what'll happen after you're done? The bookshelves come out, each one steadily painted a forest green poplar, popular in the 60s. The last one, a simple Ikea model with birch veneer and an obscure name. Side tables, the mattress, the box spring, the bed, a headboard, the post, carved mahogany pine cone finials come out bobbing rakeishly over one man's right shoulder. The garage was last. Old empty wine bottles, fishing poles, crates and crates of nothing, cans of fruit cocktail. The next poem is Memento Mori. I tend to like to talk about trash, so this one is kind of like human trash. Memento Mori, I'm removing you from my room, each strand of hair, your dust there. And there the room grows thicker with your scent, your dailiness swept from a corner and gathered over the dull face of the scarred wood floor. I look at you so trivial, each cell a tiny failure of the body. Altogether, isn't it just one large one? The mound stirs along with the broom, coaxing a dance from it, a mumbo, a cha-cha, a datiwine. All that dead swirling reminds me how alive I am. Reminds me what I can do without. I beg this oracle, your litter, where do I go from here? What went wrong? Why this mess? I think of our life. The windows left open, the coffee left on. Mid-afternoon strolls by shop windows filled with promises. Just like that, your body next to me like a silk bow, around an empty box under a tinsel-laden tree. I counted it as an idea of generosity, but the idea is a presence that I bear with rather than enjoy. Yet I bid the thought of you stay, and still the detritus, the glass table in the kitchen blooming, cracks in the shape of a dahlia. Better alone, no more shoes thrown across the room, nothing but clean, nothing but empty, and no dreaming. Some nemulist. In my dreams when I was a child, he would come to me dressed in a white tuxedo. He would bring me to lakes, and we would smile at one another, knowing what we know, knowing how we feel, how genuine and rich our lives have become, knowing each other on all these lakes. And one time in Hangzhou, we waved out all the passers-by from our private ferry to the island, and I turned to him as the wind rose, ready and willing to submit in my way. And I know that his mouth slightly agape signals to me the desire to present the full brass of his voice, a symbol of his dedication, and I cannot let him speak. And I say, dear John Sakata, your soul is too deep for me to gain access. Yet I am intrigued by your mystery, and without this mystery, I would not find you so profound. And with that, his mouth would close like the bloom of a four o'clock at 4.05, and the wind would recede into the forest, and John would close his eyes in dismay to return tomorrow, unmaking and making me. This is my dress. There are many A-lines like it, but this one is mine. This pattern is my favorite. It is my life. I must button the back as I must match it with a decent necklace. My dress without me is useless. I would lay there crumpled on the dresser. I must wear my dress fiercely. I must swish in the awe of my enemies who are trying to kill me. I must serve executive realness before he shoots me. I will. My dress and myself know that what counts in this war is not the lace collar that flatters my necklace, the body glitter, or the pumps that click. We know that it's the way we compliment each other. We will. My dress is human, even as I am, because it is my refuge. Thus, I will wear it as a reminder. I will mend the tears, know the stress points when I bend, tighten its loose buttons, know its delicate hem. I will dry clean it when necessary, even as I am pressed for time. We will be part of each other's lifestyle, we will. Before RuPaul, I swear this creed. My dress and myself are the defenders of my country. We are the masters of our enemy. We are the saviors of my life. So be it until victory is a satin evening gown and there is no enemy but peace. Two, today I am a boy in the dress, in this dress. Tomorrow I may wear a mask. It might be blue, it might be green. Tomorrow I might be black, Latino, or Asian. I might be a woman. Tomorrow I might take my dress off and just be a naked boy, or maybe now a man. Tomorrow I will walk like my father, or my mother, or my teacher, Mr. Patterson. And they will recognize me as my mother, or my father, or a people of Mr. Patterson. Having perfected his walk, having not perfected my face or my body by unmaking and making me in his image. And there, they'll take me as theirs. And we'll talk about what my parents are doing or did, and about what my parents want, and what I want, and how it's like fire and ice, how intentions are just representations of disparity attached to some form of hope. And there, around the fireplace, we will talk about art, and what contemporary art is doing, and wonder what place or shape we will find it in. The next time we enter a gallery, or better yet, a new museum dedicated to extremes and aesthetics, and we'll be in awe of all the melted plastic chairs and all the placards explaining what the melted plastic chairs represent. And we will ball our eyes out with feigned or legitimate tears depending on what personal emotional experience we've had, and what psychic space we've occupied during that experience. And we will meet again at a cafe, or a lounge, or reading, and discuss what it means to be authentic, and nothing will change. And this is a new poem in my last poem. It's called Malt. The ox cord lays its neck on the table. The nylon gym bag does its last shift in the chair. This is the sound of everything softening into the night. One dry purple bloom decides to relinquish its tie to the orchid stem. The latest piece of meat turns in the belly and whimpers its last high whimper until it's transformed into something different come morning. Another swig of kombucha and it'll sound even less. Every day, another dull sound echoes from an empty corner of the flat. Another piece of material refuses to sustain its own weight. The French pin in the kitchen finds a new position by the potatoes. The body notices these simple transitions and grows jealous of the ease of transformation. The body, the only thing in constant motion, yet still the most constant thing. It sees the deer, the hawk, the fish on the television. All change and be changed, one from the other, one to the other. It watches the phantom breath of a fish anew in the bear, the rabbit shiver in the clutches of the hawk, and the deer, belly full of wild greens. And necks stretch smooth like poplar trunks. And the body, the body saluated and in repose responds to the dark of transition within the neat, comely room and calls to the blinking television with wide eyes. Please, God, gut me and make me new. Thank you. Thank you, Dan Lau. That was great.