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Trace DePass, performing “Notes on the Great Migration”.
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Transcript provided by YouTube (unedited)
0:02
family court up being a child
0:06
adopted by my grandmother born when my
0:09
mom was 16 I think shoes not which man
0:13
but which boy I might become
0:14
I remember migrating three and yet no
0:17
parents and then courts saying the boy
0:19
old enough to choose this time and
0:21
fourth grade visitation rights allowed
0:24
me my mother and she was a fly hood moms
0:28
yeah edges and I’m same dumb same gray
0:32
sweatpants while army but in classic
0:34
down the leg pant to prove it mom still
0:38
calls herself a bird this how she loves
0:41
herself I think I didn’t get the chance
0:45
to know her how nest no branches I’ll
0:48
tap her and custody papers fall like
0:50
bird feathers onto the floor here black
0:54
foster homes be broken trees and I
0:56
hatched from the system perpetuating
0:58
itself where in most poems don’t make it
1:00
out she came to me when I was five seven
1:03
a couple times like you know I’m you
1:05
know I’m your mother right
1:08
I say yes she must need to know I know
1:11
this how I love my mom’s I think I know
1:13
I inherited her flinch at those that say
1:16
though fly yet they’ll return when mom
1:19
can’t find a word to peck I tell her I
1:22
wasn’t able to mosaic which of a promise
1:24
my father left inside and shrapnel but I
1:27
want to and even after I’m a pile of
1:29
feathered bone dancing into dust I still
1:32
may not find enough but I dig and claw
1:35
away with wings like a God in the nest
1:38
gray stratus clouds escape under me as
1:41
mist or his mist which I bite hits you
1:43
grit through with his Thunder his
1:46
absence empty like thunder into my nest
1:48
like wow this is a cage I bit into this
1:54
one to be enough for you how my bird
1:56
beak mistakes a bird cage for stubborn
1:59
twigs was it DNA that struck like a
2:02
storm and let blood somersaults across
2:04
my body this whole time is that why I
2:06
was born
2:07
unmade because since birth I’ve been
2:10
thrown in this cage wherein nothing in
2:12
it ever
2:13
like a parent’s love I’ll do my father
2:16
think I was a Phoenix are these his
2:18
ashes he forgotten me I am i burning in
2:20
a sack lock
2:22
I only know five answers for certain one
2:25
I am NOT my father’s Phoenix to home
2:30
must be wherever we kiss to keep warmth
2:31
in and shut smoke out three neglected
2:34
and abandoned all fires I can only be
2:36
man made for Vaseline
2:39
I think protects the skin from crisp
2:41
because some boys wings off to burn
2:43
brighter and better than birds five is
2:47
lightning I don’t know if this what he
2:50
left me or why he left her but if my
2:52
father’s answer for why he gone ever
2:54
struck
2:59
[Music]
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This post was previously published on YouTube.
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