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Michael Mlekoday, performing at the Button Studio in Minneapolis, MN.
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Button Poetry is committed to developing a coherent and effective system of production, distribution, promotion and fundraising for spoken word and performance poetry.
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Transcript provided by YouTube (unedited)
0:02
one
0:03
i crossed myself against the girl i
0:05
found within me kneeling
0:07
with gin
0:09
with slang and bad neighborhood
0:11
vernacular with everything mustached and
0:13
broken about me and still i was
0:16
overflowing with woman names
0:18
fox and wedding feathers
0:21
peonies and plum blossoms a voice like
0:24
syrup pouring from me
0:26
the worry of girlfriends my own
0:29
2.
0:30
watch me remix you she said
0:32
watch me stain your lips designer red
0:35
with sex
0:36
welcome this fresh undressing sister
0:39
this baptism by hairbrush garden
0:42
swelling thick with the moon
0:45
three
0:46
this place is old
0:48
warbled altar in the shape of boy
0:51
a city so ruined
0:53
the draw of being after dying
0:56
our lady reincarnate my father as a
0:59
dress
1:00
my mouth as fog every saint a swallow
1:03
every swallow a bat or bolt any kid from
1:07
my block one hot arrow into the river
1:10
the body as a bridge collapsed
1:13
come again as musk and moss
1:16
come again haunting the blood machine
1:19
come again again as a rhymed eye in the
1:22
woods the smell of rain on sidewalk the
1:25
morning you left the body still
1:27
bootlegging the record still skipping
1:30
with praise
1:31
four
1:32
let the nose first animal in me erupt
1:35
into a field of girl and good ghost
1:38
story
1:39
let it be marrow and braid
1:41
past as honey to pause and fear of my
1:44
own flesh them as ripe cave mouth fang
1:48
and spring five down down all the dead
1:53
swallowed neighborhoods of the body
1:55
raised like a river in rainfall the
1:58
haircut that becomes the dozen dirts of
2:01
drag
2:02
bury me brandishing a dress a pistol and
2:05
poland broken as my lungs in summer
2:09
six
2:10
if i wanted the gnawing
2:12
if i wanted the sweet grief under my
2:15
tongue
2:16
if the cemetery expanded like a city if
2:19
i was hard as the woods and the
2:20
congregation dropped a letter like a
2:23
guillotine if sex and exhaust be
2:25
forgotten
2:27
if you named me myth and nothing more
2:30
seven
2:31
make me tongue daylight
2:33
i’ll be any kind of haunted
—
This post was previously published on YouTube.
***
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