Welcome to a bonus episode for a poetry and bone. As I was preparing the poem

Smoke Screen by Noel Rivilla, I started writing to her initially to ask for

permissions and then she wrote back saying what kind of things you liked me to

say about the poem so of course they responded and then she responded to my

response and then I responded again and pretty soon we were penpots and our

correspondence spoke about poetry and language and culture and how history

shows up in complicated ways in the ordinary every day as you look around and

the engagements that we had were so rich that we had on being decided that we

would ask no if she would be happy to come on for a conversation so here is

that conversation. We'll start by hearing Noel Rivilla read her own poem Smoke

Screen.

Smoke Screen for every hard working father who ever worked at H.S.S. especially mine.

Was he a green long sleeve jacket and God-fearing man on the job bloodshot

marrying metal in his heavy gloves bringing justice to his father who was also a

smoking man no bathroom breaks no helmets no safe words he whistled sugar cane

through his neck through his unventilated wife his chronic black ash

daughters this is what a burn schedule looks like and if believing in God was a

respiratory issue he was like his father marrying metal to make a family at

home he smoked before he slept in the corner with the door a jar cigarette

poised like a firstborn well-behaved rehearsed curtains drawn bedrooms

medicated he was always burning into something part dark part pupils for my

father the night was best alone when only he could see through the world and

...