 I thought we would do something kind of unique tonight because I want to introduce a couple of really fine emerging poets to you who have collaborated with me for a long time, especially in the media of publications and collages and words and poetry. And so I want to introduce to you the first poet tonight. Actually, originally from San Diego, and he came to San Francisco on the 14 mission bus from San Diego, I don't know. One of those sort of magical, realist moments. It has been here collaborated for a long time at San Francisco State with C. Pockely, that great journal of literature and with the ongoing series, Vo Sintinta at Ellicott Books. So with that, please give a warm welcome to my colleague and friend, Jose Cadena. Pensamientos. My thoughts sometimes take me to the train where grandmother told me to watch the ships on the dock. The warships my uncles, her admired sons, had built. From San Isidro to Encanto, the murals would greet me with an imagined diversity. If lost behind the big bags of women who carried them from downtown to Tijuana, grandmother would call me to go with her and rest my head on her arm. There would be instant friendship with little boys and girls, but times were shy. How strange the way adults want their children to say hello to other children in harmony as to train them for romance. Two, yesterday I lost a dream in this room. It was sitting on the sofa or on the floor under the rug running around. I don't remember if there was a lollipop or a bowtie, but there might have been cotton candy. These combinations may mean that I desire essential sticky pleasure with good humor, or good humor will take me to a desire sticky pleasure, or sticky desired pleasure will result in humor. There was a duck and there was a lake, and it means that I may be fertile right now. I saw grandmother looking out the window at the place that was once her home. Yellow walls, yellow floor, apron, yellow all. There was no black ocean in this one. There was no entering envelopes, falls or persecutions. There was no somewhere my love. There was hail. This stream was about hail and the fertile challenges that I am facing. Actually, I think I want to read a poem in honor of one of the great figures of the Mission District. Some of you might know him, hanging out. Do you see him? Every time you go down 24th Street, you can't miss him. Yes, I'm talking about Alfonso Taxidor. Yes, no, maybe. Yes, yeah, no, I guess the rest of you are from Walnut Creek. And so Alfonso is actually one of the great figures, I think, mythical, legendary, almost. He's now in the hospital at Laguna Anda. So a few years ago, we had a benefit for him. And I wrote this poem. So maybe I'll start with this poem for Alfonso. It's called Machetero. The machete is not just for cutting cane Alfoncito. It is also good for decapitating snakes, cutting trails, raising huts, and to defend against hunger, loneliness, misery, and anguish. It is the best friend of the poor. It rebutes the arrogance of the powerful and lowers by about 10 inches the height of the rich. I've kind of been working in the noir genre. And if you know noir, of course, it refers to those things that happen in the darkness. And they happen in the darkness because they are of moral ambiguity, things like. Nobody mentions that there's $250 billion missing from the wars in Iraq and other places, according to our own government accounting agency. So where do you hide $250 billion? That's a bee like in bastards. The same place you hide torture in the darkness. So recently, actually, they just finished a few weeks ago independent film based on my short story, The Other Barrio, about arson and displacement and gentrification, corruption, murder, sex, the Mission District. Let me read you the opening paragraphs of that short story. It's called The Other Barrio. I think you can find it somewhere online or something. It was on the corner of 16th and Valencia, the Apache Hotel, a once elegant residence for out-of-town visitors. More recently, a rundown joint for several dozen single men and some desperate families. Every time I go by the spot, I still hear the screams, the cries for help of those who were caught in the fire, the night, the Apache Hotel burned down. The newspapers screened the headlines the next day, seven dead in fire. It didn't state the cause, but I knew I would be dragged into it. And I didn't want to be dragged into it. I had cited the place three times, but not for fire hazards, just the common stuff, garbage and road and infestations. Had there been a fire hazard, God himself could not have stopped me from making sure the owner took care of it. Now, it was going to come down to me. That's why Choi had taken me off the case. He was my shithead boss at the Department of Building Inspections. And my job was on the line. If my report had failed to mention a fire hazard, which it did not, seven people had died. And I wasn't going to carry those dead. They weren't my dead. Let whoever killed them carry them. I want to introduce a really fine emerging writer that I have a lot of respect and admiration for. And we've published her in the journal C. Bagley and have featured her in the reading series, Vos in Tinta. So she's going to read us a short story. So please give us a warm welcome to write from the Mission District on the 14 Mission Bus, Estela Durán. So this short story is called The Men Outside Home Depot. I watched the eight men stand outside of Home Depot waiting for work. It's hard because you can't hire all of them. You technically aren't supposed to hire any of them. There are criminal charges for aiding undocumented aliens. Yet here I am in my two-door Mazda, scoping out the parking lot, making sure that the police didn't put these men here to set me up. My yard is probably the size of an average living room. The front yard, no bigger. I could do all the yard work. It would take all day, but I've done it before. Still, I am here and have every intention of hiring about three of these guys for two hours of work and paying them $50 each. I want to do this because they are people just like me. They are the people who aren't holding signs asking for money. Instead, they are here at Home Depot waiting for work. I see brown skin like my own. I see dark hair and eyes like my own, filled with hope that someone will pull up and say, hop in. I give money to the homeless. Why can't I give them work to someone who's, why can't I give work to someone who is asking for it? My politically correct friends tell me not to hire those undocumented people. They tell me they will only stay if you keep giving them work. I tell them these people are my people. My friends assure me in any other circumstance I would not use this phrase. They are right. My family's from Texas, and they've been here since after the Alamo. My grandparents left Texas and came to California back in the 80s. I don't have any family in Mexico or South America or in any speaking Spanish-speaking country. But they speak the language my grandparents spoke. My grandparents were both fluent in English and Spanish. My mother tells me that when my grandmother lived in Texas, she had servants who only spoke Spanish, and that's how she knew. I'm here at Home Depot not trying to hire servants, but to hire people who need work. Am I no different? Identity is skewed. I tell three of them to get in my car in my Americanized Spanish accent. They pull the seat forward and all squeeze in the back. I say one of them can sit in the front. They politely nod and call me senora and say that the back seat will do just fine. I tell them to put their seatbelt on. They don't ask what I need them to do or how much I will pay them. The only sound in the car is from the CD in my car playing Johnny Cash. I let them out of my car and show them the weeds and the grass that need to be cut. The three men compliment the appearance of my home with their hats against their chests. I show them where the tools are and they get to work immediately. I watch them for a few seconds from inside the house. It's a hot day, so I take them bottled water. I feel this need to be overtly nice to them. They are timid and grateful. It's so hard to imagine a life of instability where you have no idea whether you will make money for yourself or your family on a daily basis. They move quickly. I ask them what their names are as they work. The man pulling the weeds tells me his name is Fermin and that he's from Guatemala where his wife and two kids are. The youngest one pruning the roses says his name is Manuel and he was born in Mexico City. The shortest one who hardly spoke says his name is Tino and leaves out where he's from. The youngest one asked me my name and where I'm from. I tell him my name and I say I was born here. He looks back down at the rose bush then he asks where my parents are from. Telling him my mom's family is from Texas and my dad was born in El Salvador. The shortest one looks up and asks me which part in a Spanish accent very similar to my father's. Reaching over to hand him gardening gloves I tell him. I don't know since my father never told me. Tino says he is from El Salvador too and attempts to talk to me more about my dad eager to hear details. I feel a strange guilt when I'm unable to give him any information real or made up. I knew nothing of El Salvador other than my father being born there. I wish I had known at least the name of a town or a place that I could mention just to connect with Tino. Instead all I could do was shrug my shoulders and smile. Tino looks at the American flag hanging from the pillar and tells me in Spanish without any eye contact that I should find out more about my dad's childhood and the life in Salvador. The two other men look at Tino in a way that says he should probably work more and talk less. My mother's car pulls up and she waves from inside. As she gets out she looks at the men. I'm so glad you hired people to do this. You can't keep doing this on your own you know. She turns to them and says why hello there. The men nod politely and send her a broken hello. My mother asks if we're still getting sushi and I tell her that we will as soon as they're done. I invite her inside and she smiles. The men continue working and I tell them if they need anything that I will be inside. My mom asks where I found them. I tell her home depot and she scoffs. You can't just pick up people off the street and take them to your home. All three of them could have locked you in a room and robbed you blind if I hadn't come. I told her she worried too much and that they seemed like nice people. She rolled her eyes and dug in her purse handing me a business card. She says here call Robert next time. He's a landscaper and always does the job right. Plus you shouldn't be hiring those people. They overcharge their for work these days. I hear a knock at the door and all three men tell me they're finished with the yard. I give them $50 and they tell me that it's too much. They were only here for 20 minutes. I tell them it's okay and offer them a ride back to Home Depot. Fidmin puts his hands in a prayer pose and says that they can walk, that it's not that far. I smile and can't remember how to say I appreciate what you've done in Spanish. So I too put my hands in prayer pose and respond with what I know. Gracias. I watched them walk down the street past all the different sized American flags on the porches of my neighbor's houses. All different sizes yet representing the same thing. I see my neighbor Dan watering his plants and following the three men with his whole body. They take off their hats and bow to him. He clenches his lips together and doesn't nod or show any regard to their politeness. He looks back at me and waves, howdy neighbor, how are you? I lift my arm with my hand wide open. I'm well, thanks. And then quietly, I'm doing well. Thank you. So thanks for joining us again tonight here for the Serigralia reading here in conjunction with the exhibit. If you haven't seen the exhibit, it's totally tremendous. And I also want to take time to thank Joan Jasper. Joan, thank you for inviting us to come by. Let's have a hand for Joan back there. And we might have another poem or two. And then we'll have a question and answer period. And if that doesn't work out, we can put on the gloves and fight out there. Pass the six sign. I hate it when these poetry readings are so calmado. It's like, come on, you know, let's liven it up a little bit. So anyway, I want to bring back Jose. I had to tell you that we're also kind of honoring Jose tonight because first of all, he just graduated from San Francisco State University with a master's degree, fine arts. And in a debt that could sink a couple of countries it is slow dancing time and a little girl is affixed to how this song makes the adults move and how those men in white with carnations on their chest sing and play the music, some with their eyes closed. And there again is a little girl who's opening a window to look out and she forgot she has a braid. That is a little late from work and mama slicing up the bread, listening to the static radio guilty of loving you. Here we go. Nothing you do can make me mad was a lie once told. Here we go. So maybe people will identify with this one. My knee made a little sound, a cranking of some sort while I was going up these stairs. What the fuck was that? Was that age? A reminder that these legs won't last forever? And then, so then I'm gonna read, I wrote this, these are very fresh and let's see what happens with how you receive these. I saw this horrible video on the news about this plane being blown up. So here we go. I see these horrible images I cannot process. A head like a watermelon, spread, smoke and metal. Here they have all become contortionists. Okay, and then I'll just finish it with something really fun. That's pretty dark. Here we go. An auntie asked grandmother if it was okay for me to play dolls with my sister. But I remember playing with grandmother's wick and why did grandmother have a wick? Did I believe her hair was her own? And why does your birthday cake have a rainbow? Dad asked and dad gets mad when he sees those kinds of things. After the sort of more noirish poems of Josez, I think there was a noir poem in there too, no. By the way, noir has become really big. I have a stack of books this high in my study of noir, Latino writers, novels. Yeah, just total explosion of that genre because we're living in the golden age of noir, right? The golden age of scoundrels, swindlers, scheisters and hoxsters. So kind of the world is upside down in a way. So let me offer you a poem, El Mundo Al Reves. It's a strange world we're living here where fat buzzards perch on trees while good food lies on the ground and all around children in their bare feet. It's a strange world we're living here. There's some hard knocks on this block where everywhere you look, there's heavily armed cops and a body or two that never had a chance to scream, stop. Cause there's some hard knocks on this block. Es el mundo al revés donde van corriendo los pes y los pájaritos nadan y los gatos bardos ladran. Pues así es el mundo al revés. It's a weird scene on this street where you're taught to lie and cheat but in the end it doesn't matter who you are. You're just another piece of meat because it's a weird scene on this street. Oh, it's a strange world they're selling here where no one looks you in the eye and the budget goes for hate and war and fear. So the best thing is not to buy anything because it's a strange world they're selling here. Es el mundo al revés donde van corriendo los pes y los pájaritos nadan y los gatos bardos ladran. Pues así es el mundo al revés. I'll end with this one so that we have a little bit of time to converse and talk and I know John said there's some of my books for sale back there and most writers that you buy their book, they'll sign it for you. You buy my book, I sign it for you twice. So I'm actually moving into, very much into the sort of other genres I think. I'm trying to explore, so this is a new poem, fairly new. It's called Diablo Moon. He stands at bar, fingers split with cigarette, smoke unfurling from his mouth, an angry mixtec God scratching the mahogany plank, the brawls and prison still ahead. He was 19, scorched as the hills behind him. She was 28, ancient Yorona mama baby, in blue jeans and leather jacket, come to set him free or on fire. After they escaped fleeing her square husband and Pinot, the beers and oldies looped around his heart, tying his memories to her hand on the wheel, drunk on plum wine making out as she drove one hand around his neck at 75 miles an hour. And that's when she crashed, the crimson Mustang, twisting it around an oak tree on highway four at the foot of Mount Diablo. The explosion singed their eyelashes and the five years of rage that followed. Okay, so I think that's enough car crashes and barfights. I didn't read the poem about the barfights, that's all right. And all other exigencies that might have happened tonight. But I always like to have a dialogue for a few moments with the audience in case some of you have something that's been keeping you up late at night. That has to do with writing. I did see a preview of the movie at the Brava. So I was wondering, and it was quite a while ago. So could you update people, you mentioned your, and you read your first part of the book. So I would like to hear an update. Well, they have finished it. And so I know the producers are very excited about that. They have submitted it to the Toronto Film Festival, I believe the San Diego Film Festival and the Mill Valley Film Festival. And they feel pretty strongly that they have a really good chance at Mill Valley. So we'll see, yes? But no, it is finished in the can, as they say. So we're very excited about that. You say this connected with Sarah Graffia? Said to Graffia, yeah. Yeah, exhibit next door. And I saw two poster artists over there. I went on Wednesday and saw that. And I wanted to know if you were involved in any kind of social, political movements like that depicted in the posters like United Farm Workers or anything like that. Have you ever been involved in that? Well, if you look closely at, especially some of the posters around Nicaragua, the red and black ones that have a Sandinos figure on it, you'll see my name appearing as a participant, as a poet in a lot of those events. And in fact, along with Roberto Vargas, the great Nicaraguan poet of the Mission District, actually named honorary poet laureate of the Mission, organized a lot of those events, especially the ones around Nicaragua. That was part of our specialty during that period. Yeah. I've got a question, Alejandra. How did you get into the noir genre? How did that all come about? Well, you know, and I think in part growing up, perhaps some of you saw a lot of those dark black and white movies, they don't tell a vision. I never understood them. I just knew they were in black and white and there were heavy things going on, but I couldn't tell what was going on. But I think it's one of the great genres that allows the writer to enter it and tell a story of a very sort of complex nature. But the easy part, I think, is that the structure is already there. Yeah? So you just, in a way, kind of fill in the characters and the situation and stuff, but you have to realize, because a lot of people don't, that crime fiction, detective stories, thrillers are not the same as noir. Yeah? For me, that's a huge distinction that I'm constantly trying to tell people, right? Noir, which is why I say it's the golden age of noir, deals with corruption. Yeah? Those things, as I said, that happen in the shadows because they are of moral ambiguity, yeah? In fact, I don't think I brought it, but I have a piece called The Late Hour of the Night in which it talks all about the things that happen in the late hours of the night, yeah? The sense of noir, that's what it means, darkness, shadows, yeah? So, for me, and as I mentioned, it's not just myself, right? It's become really a sort of phenomena internationally. I'm reading Italian noir novelists, there's Greek noir novelists. As I mentioned, tons of Latin American noir is like, which obviously means we're living in the great golden age of corruption, right? What else can it mean? Hi, yeah, I was wondering what, in what way or what groups you know about are the ones that you think would be most helpful to be involved with in dealing with this immigration issue and these children being put in like little tiny rooms, like 10 by 10, like 100 of them freezing to death? What do you think we should do? Well, you know, I've written opinion pieces precisely on that issue, yes? And here's my perception and I think historically I'm proven accurate, right? Why are people fleeing, for example, Honduras? Yes? We forget that just three years ago, our very own President Obama, Democrat, liberal, leaning African-American overthrew the Democratic government of Honduras, right? Returning it to a decrepit oligarchy that has looted that country for 100 years and now everybody's fleeing Honduras. Well, you just, my metaphor is, you are burning down the houses of Latin America. What do you expect them to do? And notice what Obama's doing. The most absurd thing to get someone to put him back in the fire, he just burned the house down of Honduras. So as long as the United States continues to intervene in Latin American affairs in this way, right? That flight of human beings fleeing those fires are gonna continue, so. There you go. Stop intervening in Latin America, right? Stop overthrowing the governments, et cetera. And things obviously might improve, but very complex issue, but a very important question. And keep in mind that for thousands of years migration on this continent has gone back and forth, right? There's in fact probably more North Americans than Guadalajara than there is Mexicans by now, or in San Miguel de Allende, right? So it goes back and forth. Okay, well let's hear it for our poets tonight. Okay, come up here, Jose. Estela, come up here, take a bow. We're really proud of these emerging writers right out of the Mission District, right out of our community. And Estela, do not take a bow. Take a bow, yay. Great story. And Estela, then take a bow. Thank you very much, and all of you take a bow.