 Good afternoon everybody. Welcome. Hi, good to see you all in person here today at the main library. Welcome to the San Francisco Public Library. Thank you for the time. Taking the time to be with us today for the celebration of blackness, our joy, our love, and our fight for liberation, as told through the written word in the anthology, Black Fire This Time, which is edited by Dr. Kim McMillan. I'm Shauna Sherman, manager of the African-American Center, which is on the third floor of the main library where we are today. Before we get started, it should be acknowledged the library is located in the area known as San Francisco, which is on the unceded ancestral homeland of the Ramaytusholoni peoples of the San Francisco Peninsula. As the original peoples of this land, the Ramaytusholoni have never ceded loss, nor forgotten their responsibilities as the caretakers of this place. We recognize that we benefit from living, working, and learning on their traditional homeland. As uninvited guests, we affirm their sovereign rights as first peoples, and wish to pay our respects to the ancestors, elders, and relatives of the Ramaytush community. At the African-American Center, we also honor the gifts, resilience, and sacrifices of our black ancestors who toiled the land, built the institutions that established this nation's wealth and freedom, and survived anti-black racism despite never being compensated nor fully realizing their own sovereignty. Yes, we acknowledge this exploitation of not only labor, but of our humanity, and through this process are working to repair some of the harms done by public and private actors. Because of their work, we are here and will invest in the descendants of their legacy. So, like I said, today's program is being filmed, so please turn off your cell phones if you haven't already. Thank you. I just wanted to mention the African-American Center holds a collection of more than 5,000 items by and about black people. We host exhibits and programming, and you can sign up for our newsletter on sfpl.org to find out what's happening. And next week, in our virtual library, we will be screening Belly of the Beast, which is a film about the fight against forced sterilization in California prisons, and that will be followed by a conversation moderated by Wanda Sabir with Kelly Dillon and Cynthia Chandler. So today's reading is going to be moderated by Dr. Kim McMillan, and before I bring her up to the podium, I just want to offer a heartfelt thank you to Dr. McMillan. Thank you. We are so grateful for all the programs you bring to us at the library, and those have been recorded and are available to be watched on our YouTube channel. And I also wanted to thank our media services department who's filming the program, and John Smalley who did all the work behind the scenes program happen. And again, thank you again, Kim. Dr. Kim McMillan is a lecturer at the University of California Merced. She's a producer, playwright, and contributor to some other blues and new perspectives on Amiri Baraka and Black Power Encyclopedia 1965 through 1975. And she is also the editor of Black Fire This Time, volume one. So I'd like to welcome Dr. Kim McMillan. The first thing I wanted to say is I am so grateful. I am grateful for each one of you having given your art to us to create this wonderful anthology, Black Fire This Time. My gratitude is just from my heart. And I'm also happy that this is a book. Mine is a messed up cover, but this is a book that I use in my classroom. This summer I'll be teaching theater and social responsibility at Merced Junior College. My God, excuse me, at UC Merced in Merced, California. And when I first started teaching about the Black Arts Movement, it was very hard to get books. They were either out of print or they just were not published. And now there is so much on the Black Arts Movement. And it's just with gratitude that I'm standing here to be adding my voice and all of your voices to that. And I wanted to just say a couple of words because I was very, very, the humanity and the kindness of people who gave to this book is just enormous. I told the story of receiving a call from Nikki Giovanni and she said, do you have everything you need? And I said, wow, yes, thank you. I said, well, call this person, call this person, call this person. And I got so much of that. People saying to me, make sure you get this person's voice or make sure you get that person's voice. And it was all around the country from people like Calamu Yasalam to Gwendolyn Brooks' daughter, nor Blakely. People were just opening up their hearts with kindness and I'm so appreciative of that to make this happen. I'm also very excited that this is our first program in person. And I know that it's not easy with the environment we are living in right now. And so I appreciate everyone coming to this and showing your support of us. Thank you. Our first author is Landon Smith. And what is so wonderful about that is that I'm getting to see the people that I've only just spoke to on the phone. And so I feel like this is some type of reunion, so to speak. But let me give you a bit about Landon. Landon lives in Oakland, California, a great place, but was born in LA and grew up in San Jose. He received a BA in English from the University of Michigan, Arbor, and an MA from Mills College in Oakland. He has performed poetry in Oakland, New York, Detroit, Berkeley, the Bowery, just everywhere. And I would just love you to give a very warm welcome to Landon Smith. So this, the poem in the anthology is called Oxymorons and Margins. The margins seem to be filled with people cast aside to confine spaces. Being told to be the bigger person, oxymoronic decrees declared from the smell of paranoia lacquered on the policies passed under the cover of midnight flagpins and hallways. Feet shuffling across tile, gripping sweaty palms, pushing buttons in fear of what retaliation looks like. Eugenics formalized into government policy and state line fractures in search of the hairline atop a compound. Turner Diaries' distribution to terrorists taken of arms against imaginary pyromaniacs. Empowered by poisoned police pyramids, not sure if we'll make it out of this future case study with lungs intact. Pandemic poisoning, working class human sacrifices. Breathing toxic emissions from capitalistic debilitating decimation, inhaling tear gas, paid for by city budgets and tech company slush funds, through backdoor donations, propping up genocide for stock options and public offering, not sure if we'll make it out with lungs intact. Not sure on what spirit to call since white Jesus was classed on the wrist in a shack church, glowing from a burning cross and a church bomb. Essence stolen like wombs and concentration camps while you in hand stay tied. Down-bottom death camps recycling rises to power for fear mongers and IQ destitution. Echoing in hallways from shuffling feet, drowning out screams from margins. Oxymoronic existence of minimized grandiosity, ripping apart insides and tearing apart families like barbed wire on flesh we have no body left. All we are is an idea, an idea within a theory. A theory with a flag and a constitution baked in blood, tobacco, sugar and cotton fibers rewritten to be large in margins resembling burial plots. Not sure if eugenics precedent can be pulled from tiled hallways and step and fetch tap dance shoes. Fatigue filling the lungs of an oxymoron, fighting for freedom, basking in air unsafe to breathe and tear gas blankets. There are two less feet in a tent this evening and somewhere a prison guard gives another close fifth speech about order. The air thins above a tent pole eviction notice while a new jumpsuit is handed to a tooth on a cement floor. Nikki Bass photoshoot next to gentrified housing while no Gallo votes to steal more fruit vell money into patrol cars. Leech van ready to pile up bodies just to bleed corners dry for development while Gary Yee red tags another black school for prison bed construction. At least there will be clean street corners, a dirty mouth and a suit will stick. At least there will be law and order. And dirt is always better when swept under a rug or at least onto the next encampment. And three tents blown on the other side of 580 will lower property value just for more protest signs to pop up and be ignored next week. But did you know there is no such thing as an empty bomb threat thrown at a black house? Greenwood and Pine still can't move past the cement with Merrill mixed in, so excuse me for taking white history seriously as I walk down these HBCU steps with a target on my back for what another white board member bans a book from speaking on. And another black mayor steps up to a podium to say it is a shame. Or in these troubling times. Or we are better than this despite all the evidence otherwise. And matter of fact, who is we? Who is we to be in back room meetings? Who be the we turning the wheel on the ship? Who is we saying we are part of the problem saying we do it to ourselves saying we can't get respect until we respect ourselves? Who? Who is we coming sideways out your mouth talking about mow paid for leeches to put up see something say something signs? And turn around and pocket dial bomb thirst to black campuses talking about we better watch our back. We better hurry up and die. We better go back now that the labor cost more than the ground meat on my back. Who? Who is we supposed to be a part of? Who is we supposed to be better than sitting on the left side of an abandoned building? Because I took white history for what it is and spoke to the remains of the last threat. Shoved on to a white washed MLK quote. Shoved on to the left hand of a Philadelphia cut short. Shoved on to a Tulsa. I mean, a Rosewood. I mean, I mean, I am on pace to be called a nigger two hundred and twelve times by summer. It is January. There are only 10 days left in this month and I refuse to be a courts by the third but catch me fist close on the fourth. And I might be gone by the fifth if this white woman in power has her way. Which is the same as that white man in that seat, which is the same as that last mischeck, which is the same as that eviction notice. My mother says the cloth of my ancestors makes me bulletproof. So I put on a new head wrap every time passive aggressive headshots fire off of cradle tongues down into the gutters of unswept streets where I'm told that I belong. And I walk around with cash just in case I pass another cardboard sign. Given unfortunate crates just to see more hungry mouths the next month. It's almost like I cannot fix these encampments on my own like starvation is intentional like billions in surplus don't exist. By the end of this poem, you can tell me what the cause is while I kick three more election pamphlets off my doorstep since I don't do drugs on Tuesdays ever since my neighbor overdosed on Kamala Harris bumper stickers. Meanwhile, the city of San Francisco made 90 million in parking tickets. Just to not have affordable housing just to hire more pigs to put tickets on windshields to pay for pigs putting tickets on windshields and my last $60 goes to the cardboard sign again. You know a fist fight is always fair to the waistband with a gun tucked inside. You know an eviction is always fair to the feet standing on a bankroll. And my cousin told me that not all skinfolk are kinfolk so I keep two feet in my back pocket so I land on my feet when I'm sucker punched between line breaks. And a neoliberal slides of judge lump sums to slide me into solitary silence so that a white tenure professor can tell you that these are not poems. That these are lyrics. That these are a soapbox. And that they are too unhoused and must cut their hair before they deserve a home but perhaps I am still hanging from a rope somewhere. And I do not have the wherewithal to see my own name memorialized in block and jar dirt. Perhaps I am still aspirating in a dungeon somewhere unwilling to be dragged somewhere onto a boat for property maintenance. Perhaps I am pieces pieced together still tied to previous iterations screamed into these breaths. I now take with reluctance to revisit visualizations knowing I'm both here and in a rope and in a dungeon and in a chain anchor straddling a past life and a half life. Unwilling to pass on pieces to any iteration of myself that does not understand that I am the last breath in a train track execution as much as I am the voice in a classroom. Keep seeing train headlights blind in my resolve. I am unable to breathe the air of the asphyxiated above dirt monument not knowing what the strength looks like to hold that space on a straddle. My therapist keeps telling me I need to remember to breathe but perhaps I am still hanging still below ground still afraid of a future with no future beneath a future of museum boxes and jars of dirt grappling with limbo. I am both here and nowhere trying to find somewhere safe somewhere free somewhere not black and blue circle encrusted with settler colonialism telling me liberation is the ballot or the billy club the ballot or the gun. The ballot or the rope perhaps I'm still hanging from a rope somewhere trying to hold my grandfather's hand one last time before the coroner tells you a story about how I did this to my own body. Thank you. I wanted to apologize to Landon. I couldn't see in the book and so I was trying to wing it but I wanted to actually read a little bit more about you because you are fabulous. He has performed poetry in Oakland, New York, Detroit, Berkeley, Bowery, No Desk Concert and the Santa Clara Poet Laureate inaugural poetry reading. His work has been published in Silver Pinion Magazine and several other magazines. His work seeks to disrupt institutions, poetry, elitism and express raw social critiques while drawing audiences into how he proceeds processes the world. He hones his craft weekly with the Patrice Lumumba writing group based out of the East Side Arts Alliance in Oakland and he is currently a full time faculty member at Chabot College. He sounds fabulous doesn't he? Absolutely fabulous. And so I just want to say I'm just thrilled to be sitting here, standing here with such wonderful people. Now I'm just getting the page where Avacha. And Avacha, I've known Avacha for ever. And she is one of the most talented, just thoughtful and strong-willed activists in action. And she's also a playwright, multi-percussionist, photographer, teacher and she's been published in English and Spanish in the US, Mexico, Europe and in more anthologies than she remembers. That's good. She is an award-winning poet and multi-instrumentalist who has opened for Betty Carter in New York City and so many others that I will not pronounce and insult anyone by my bad pronunciation of Spanish. And she's also played with Robin, Robson, Roland Kirk. I'm sure I did that wrong. And so many others as well as John Handy. And I would love you to give a warm welcome to Avacha. Can you hear me? I am so honored to be here and landing. I thought the floor was going to burst in the flame there. Anyway, I'm really honored to be in this book and for, I mean, just, I love Kim's work. But you know, what I found out that, you know, James Baldwin was in the book, I just cried. I mean, to be in the same book that he even, you know, touched the page on much less is in the book, same book. So I'm very honored to be in this. I'm going to do a couple of things from the book and then maybe one from another book. This one of the poems in the book is called On Romanticism. I get sick of folks talking about how we as black folks don't write enough about romanticism and love and your breeze beneath the trees, et cetera. So this is my thing on it, for on romanticism. I would like to fly like the hummingbird floating on inspiration and sing mystical songs of love standing still in midair on a cushion of metaphors. I'd love to lie back and dance on the wind about philosophizing about life and the joy of living without having to worry about where the next meal is coming from. I mean, I admit it. I would love to write pretty poetry about pretty flowers and the beauty of freedom and have the time to enjoy it. But pretty flowers like freedom are pretty rare around here in my part of the city where even dreams cause more than I can afford. And the only flowers I get to see live in store windows are laid dead in the streets covered with wine and snotting God knows what. But our beautiful children are watching they watch like urban butterflies hibernating in concrete cocoons. They watch and they grow and they grow and watch and never stop dream. They never stop dreaming of becoming poets. And thank you. And this one I wrote because, you know, the powers that be try to make it sound like we have a hero. There's this one here and I'm not knocking those people that they acknowledged as heroes such as Harriet Tubman, you know, you know, Frederick Douglass, etc. But the truth of the matter is, is that every place we've been enslaved in every place in the world where people have stepped on our necks, they have been folks that have been rebelling on a regular basis. And so I dedicated to those folks and sing their praises and thank them for all the sacrifices they made. They just call it we're never alone, never alone. We have never been alone. Marcus Garvey, Arturo Schoenberg, David Walker, Ida B. Wells, Dessalene and Queen and Zynga, and all those other incorruptible ancestors who showed their contempt for slavery and servitude by spitting in the face of evil, jumping overboard and freeing their souls, proud, unchanged souls, whose restless spirits still roam the ocean's floor, stamping their presence on our dreams and minds and hands, revealing their essence and creativity all over the globe. We were never alone. Zumbia Palmares, Kawaya, aka John Horse Harriet Tubman in Argentina's Negros Falucho, are beautiful, brilliant ancestors, manifest themselves in life-saving rhythms, rhythmic vitamins like Lavumba, bold rhythmic magic revitalizing our lives with samba, rumba, lando and juba. They sing to us in daydreams and dance with us on stages. Their tears become our paintings, our books, our poems. Feed on self-esteem when life gets in our way. We will never be alone. Ya esantoa, Denmark Vessie, Granny Nanny, Alonso de Jeskos, and Gaspar Shangri, unstoppable freedom fighter, hero of better crews, who reincarnated themselves in each and every one of us, said, Oh no, we are here, we are free, and no matter what they say, we're here today and we're here to stay. We are the voice of the millions of ancestors whose names we never got a chance to know. Ancestors who know that some of us are brave enough to know their truth, to know that we were born to tell their truth and sworn to repaying their sacrifices every day with our actions. A sacred legacy written in blood forever inscribed in our souls, an internal tattoo and inescapable reminder to never let us forget to remember the price they paid for us to know that we were never alone, that we are never alone, and we will never, never ever be alone. And I apologize for my lack of fire. I was in a bus that had an accident coming here that hit a car and I really saw and shook. So forgive me for being kind of low-key and all the usual, the voucher fire not there, but I am so honored to be here. I want to read a piece of a poem from my book and this came out with every step I take to and this is called Global African Jazz Dance. Every year, a dear friend of mine Carlton Hester puts on this major festival down at UC Santa Cruz. And I was honored to write a piece for it. I'm only going to do a piece because it's a very long piece. This is Global African Jazz Dance. It's a jolly thing, D-J-A-L-I, for the historical storytellers. I am poetry's musical child, a born-again sound freak. I have always been here and I will always be here and this time, like all the other times, was no accident. Someone somewhere in the bush wished me into existence. My coming was written in a field by some no-writing ancestor, an ancestor who was always watching and noticed each time, each every single time. Oh, Massa wasn't looking and took a break from being broken, an ancestor who was brave enough and defined enough to risk their life and sing and dance and pray me into existence. I am the prize. The result of all their desperation, their trials and tribulations, I am the product of all those lives lived in whispers, the dreams they died for, the wish they couldn't speak of is me. A girl child cooled into being as much by necessity as by love and set free by all the unseen tears of too many brothers left hanging from too many trees, too mad to be said, the ancestors just spit me out and I was back in the mixed choice. Hmm, I had no say. I was given a job to do and I landed on the road where Highland Wolf, Sundra, and Sadia Cruz crossed paths and danced. They left me in the care of two very flamboyant and serious dancers. And the air I grew up was completely saturated with the sweaty graceful beauty of their art, the sexual explicit erotic power of their syncopation, the inescapable hypnotic sensuals, old gyrations, the harmonic signature of a long ago time. Times when the spirit of poetry first put its musical spell on me, mine is a musical timeless destiny, and there is no way to escape it. I even bleed in Amana and I dream in thirteenths. Long before I was born, music took control of my soul. I never needed a one in any of those corny nursery rhymes, a rhythmic 6-8 clave, or the tune de jour of a chance for peace. Art Blakey's passion and drums called in the supernatural voice of Sabu. It was Sabu Martinez who sang my liberation song and I fell asleep listening to the trees breathe. The song of night in Amana. The sound of nightfall is my nalala by and the night time is always my right time. And there's no way to escape it. I even bleed in Amana and I dream in thirteenths. Thanks for listening to my words. I'm going to sit over here and try to nurse my soul back, etc. Avacha, thank you for that beautiful reading and I want to say some people might have turned back and went back home after something like that. I'm very grateful that you're with us. Thank you. Yeah, yeah, I think so. What's the words? There ain't no stopping us now. That's our theme song. Okay, now I'm putting on the glasses because I'm past 60. Our next poet and storyteller and just a all around brilliant woman is Amber Butch. She is a cultural strategist and grief worker who believes that black folks are already whole. I love that. Her work asks big and small questions about how we move towards actualizing spaces that center tenderness, nuance and joy while living in a world reliant on our terror. Amber has been featured in various publications, including Zora Essence and then NPR, The Black Youth Project, Wakanda Dream Lab and Me Too. Amber is currently at work on a speculative fiction novel that writes elders into our future. I like that too. We need to be in everyone's future. So please give a very warm welcome to Amber. Thank you. I'm going to keep an eye on time. I might read a new thing for y'all after this, but yeah, please buy the book. My piece that I have in here is called Ruin and I'll just begin. My brother Raheem, who is now dead, once drove his arm through the drywall in our living room, nearest the China cabinet that held our mother's most cherished photos. The house didn't shake as that part of the wall crumbled, a composed white ocean gap spraying what we never wanted into our lungs. The air never changed. Not really. Our house was always damp. We would find small puddles in the corner of rooms, a spring sprung before noticing. Our mother, Lisa, inherited the China cabinet from her mother, Merle, who inherited it from her grandmother, Lisbeth. Every Saturday she was meticulous, giving each frame the attention it deserved before we descended into the chaos of preparing for church. She used the same cloth every time, bright red and velvet, forever reminding me of cake. As she dusted, we'd sit on the clear plastic-covered couch, trying to match names with faces and scars with states, trying not to move, not to scoot, not to inevitably make the sound the owners of plastic-covered couches hate most of all. Sometimes I imagined myself melting into that plastic, watching life from a clear, squeaky bubble. Raheem wanted to keep the ferry he'd found safe, and there was nowhere our father's hands couldn't reach. He thought that if he hid the ferry in the wall and moved the China cabinet over by three feet, our father wouldn't know. But the cabinet was too heavy, and when we tried pushing it, the first of mother's things broke, a small picture with a woman sitting on a wicker chair holding flowers. They were lilies. Above and below the hole, our little tick marks against the wall for our height, our initial signifying how much we'd grown. The brick house was painted a pale yellow on the inside and always smelled of biscuits, lilac, and fried chicken. When Raheem's ghost first started visiting me, and I came home to tell my parents, my father locked me in my room, terrified that the neighbors would find out. Earlier that day, I'd gone to the market for some fresh salmon and saw Raheem grinning at me between the cassava and sweet peppers. His body was wrong, pieces of him stuck back together in a rush. Big jagged scars with thick bandages and thread, sometimes revealing the white of bone. But it was him. As he followed me home and I did my best to look away, his body healed. He looked like him, intact, whole, alive. I was terrified and excited, playing back the moment when we found his body. When we searched and prayed for any indication that his flesh belonged to some other unfortunate boy, a prayer of distance. Father said I'd lost my mind and forbade me from leaving my cold room until I found it again. That room became my world. I drew pictures of dead children. I did homework and read stories there. I craved sweets all the time. I did everything to avoid Ghost Raheem, who'd moved back into the house, into his old room. My mother brought food to my door but never came in. She wore a whitehead wrap for 60 days following his death. Father watched my every move, careful to note any inconsistencies in my recovery. But outside of using the restroom, I was never alone again. Raheem was always there. Healers visited and were paid extra to keep quiet about what happened. Of course nothing would remain secret. Names might be a minute, but everyone in town will know who it is. The little girl with the dead brother, so touched by his death that she'd begun to conjure him up. A witch, a curse, someone to be driven out. Once a thing is spoken, it is made alive. It goes on living, plummeting, weaving, building an arsenal of allies and aliases. It clings to whatever may hold it. I think I was that for Ghost Raheem, an anchor. Something to steady the loneliness. But I remained lonely, even with him there. I barely slept and was terrified at the thought that when I awoke he wouldn't be there. While at the same time remaining fearful that he would be, he was not the same. I didn't know this boy. On the morning that I was finally allowed to leave my room, after father pronounced that I'd been healed, I woke up early. I went around the house looking for something Raheem might want to help him reach the other side. He told me not to, but I did it anyway. By the time it was midday, I'd searched the entire compound and only found a misshapen blue toy truck. My clothes were dirty and my body sore. I went in to wash and change before lunch and came down once the task had been completed. At the vision of me sitting on the couch without Raheem on my right side, his favorite place, mother calmly broke the newest framed photo in the cabinet across her knee and screamed. Her naked knee bled and when I jumped up to gather towels and tweezers to remove the glass, she told me to sit down. I pray you never know pain like this Iqa. I pray you are never thrown into a world you no longer know without anything to anchor you here. Pay careful attention. This is how you remove it. I won't tell you what mother did. Just know that I almost lost her too. I want to write that line in such a way that they both become alive again because mother is half dead now. She sits for hours staring at the earth and weeping, sometimes begging to return to it. I clean her nails of dirt. We make a ritual of it, me bringing her the flower printed bowl with warm water, soft cloth and soap. Her imagining that the broken parts of her remain whole. The china cabinet is covered in dust. The black widows have made home in the fist-sized hole within the wall that is never repaired. Mother makes one more unsuccessful attempt at ending her life. Father leaves one day and never returns. Mother and I sit in our grief, busying our hands with food and cleaning, expecting some disappeared boy to knock on the door on any given day to make us whole again. Mother doesn't start seeing Ghost Rahim until six years after his death. I have six whole years alone with him and it marks me. His disappointment eating at my skin. His prayers that mother notices he is the one who helps her sleep. His not living taking up the whole of me. I am left with this boy who is and isn't my brother. A new boy angry at his death all the time. Six years later and he's just there. Sitting in between mother's knees like he did when we were both still children. She is on the ground, lying on the hot earth, offering it her prayers. She wears an orange dress and her long dreads are pinned in a purple head wrap. Her knees are caked in red brown dirt. Rahim smirks at me from one corner of his face and mouth. Watch this. I ignore him. It won't work. His weightless hand is above mother's right knee, the one that spilled all the blood from breaking. She grows cold and yells, oh, before I know it, she is up on the stairs behind me pointing. Ika, Ika, you see that? What is that? Get away beast. My shoulders are sore from all of the shaking. Rahim hangs his head low, looks up again, and then waves bashfully. Hi, mama. The curses I've heard and the ones I haven't all come rushing out of mother's mouth at once. Her short, soft body buckles together and she signs the cross, runs to grab the white chalk nearest the door and draws a line with 11 symbols. Then she signals in the air to sell it. You shall not enter my home, demon. This is no place for you. Mother locks us in the house and as we push the plastic covered couch against the door, I see Rahim wipe his forehead and cross the chalk threshold. He is inside now. Mother curses, then faints. Her body spasms. Rahim and I worry now, but only I can carry the ice for her from the chamber. Mother wakes with a start. My son, my son, is it you? Come. Rahim goes to her this time and the face as he is. The movements are his. He's a tall boy, but his ghost shape allows him to fit onto mother's lap. I give them time to be alone. Time for this less weighted me to catch up. Time for six years of no mother-son communication. For the bulk of the world to come back together again. Six years of there being two people in a home when there should be more. An eternity of mourning for someone I see every day. An unmoving stone. I run myself a hot bath with lavender, honey, and oatmeal. My brother is still dead. My head stays below the water like my mother's lay on the earth. Like my brother's the night we find his body torn to shreds. Like the bottom of father's cold whiskey glass. I have never seen the fairies. I hope they find me. Yeah, yeah. I'm curious. Is any part of this true? Oh, thank God. But did Rahim really exist? Okay. I just, oh my goodness. Okay, well, I'm better now. Completely, completely. But what can I say? We have powerful writers in this room today. You know, I'm very lucky to be here with all of you. And I'm glad Rahim was okay now. Our next author is Terita McKill. Named story medicine woman. Terita has published 72 at risk classroom student anthologies. Wow. Terita is a service to your community. She was featured at Soul of a Nation at D Young Museum, Afrofuturism, Wall and Response, and was a poet, storyteller, delegate in Beijing, China. Recent books include Synchronicity, The Oracle of Sun Medicine, and to 2020. She is co-curator of the Patrice Lamumba, excuse me, anthology. I have to get this anthology. I've been hearing so much about it. It's really wonderful. Please give a warm welcome to Terita. Thank you. Wow, thank you all so much. And I'm honored to be in this anthology. And I've read with so many of you before. It's so humbling and good to feel that we're all working toward this end to clarify what's happening in our communities, among each other. Can you hear me better now? Okay. As I said, it's good to have that understanding that we're all as a community of writers sharing this work together to clarify to our communities what is happening. And Amber, I don't know, sometimes things are channeled. Sometimes things are envisioned. And you know, you read that and you must, you know, you put that together, Kim. Because what's in the book that's been, I can't wear these glasses. Okay. They're falling off and they look like yours. I don't know what that's about, but synchronicity. You have the book, right? Well, okay. If I hadn't, if I hadn't run in circles when three years old on fields of grass with blackbird chasing me or me chasing it, if I hadn't remembered reoccurring dream at seven years of age, swallowing small stones choking under bright, lit sky in front of a long dark tunnel holding pinpoint light. If an Ethiopian woman hadn't interpreted my dream recognizing an old saying from her culture, if my body hadn't heaved and cried that day in 1989 recalling what happened 17 years prior with a chemistry professor who said I could not use the problem-solving methods of Africans with whom I studied because they were going back to Africa. I was not. If I hadn't learned PTSD and PTSD our body's cognitive ability to record and remember pain. If I hadn't experienced migraines while studying for three exams looking for subject connectedness within a circle, reading a book given me titled Moon to Find and Find, a quote that read for the African to disengage one subject from life circle would paralyze the rest and have migraines disappear shortly thereafter. If I hadn't been haunted by small globular lights, Van Ellen belts, solid gold-lime purple spheres, amassing iridescent lights that would suddenly appear and learn interdimensional beings do exist. If I hadn't been awakened by a tiger watching me calmly dream, heard a spirit come down through roof ceiling and feel its weighted impression beside me. If I hadn't called and talked to a Zen Buddhist priest for two hours who assured me I wasn't going mad or crazy nor had I committed a sin but was merely entering my enlightenment. If I hadn't commissioned my astrology chart to be calculated five times aligning on Earth as it is in heaven as an active noun-verb agreement system, if I hadn't recognized while studying organic and inorganic chemistry that iron is not only a common element found in the body throughout the universe. It causes life to be pulled or repelled in some way. If I hadn't attended the Berkeley Psychic Institute and learned how one can absorb another's programming, been invited to Stanford's Parapsychology Department with BPI and discover a trans medium who allowed another being to share her body, then discover one at my job. If I hadn't seen a slug-sized lip-suctioning leech undulate around a relative's head as though looking for a place to land and when it did weeks later, said relative could not lift her head. If I hadn't suggested she go to a Chinese acupuncturist who told her, upon the end of examination, it's as though something has sucked the life force from her head, which led me questioning, what did I see? If I hadn't read in the Archaeology of Knowledge, we must also ascribe to the institutional sites from which the doctor makes his discourse. If I hadn't worked in a mental institution as a lab tech and learned the difference between a psychic and a sick psychic, if I hadn't heard the bird's crying song while napping, unable to discern how I knew their cry, only to get up, open the door, and see birds fluttering wildly over a lifeless friend adored. If I hadn't heard a helicopter in Oakland fly over my house, drop something on the house at the corner that sounded like a whoosh. On May 13th, 1985, after 2 a.m., on the west coast, if I hadn't read in the newspaper later the same morning that a helicopter dropped a bomb on the move organizations home on the corner of Osage and Pine in Philadelphia on the east coast at 5 a.m. and note a three-hour time difference, if I hadn't felt a patient's medication for his right eye land as if a web on my left eye and associated molecular isomers mirroring molecules. If I hadn't heard an unknown goddess whisper in my ear and was shown the spelling of her name in my mind's eye, if I hadn't found her name in the dictionary as revealed and learned she was the deity of life, love and war, my son and rising sign. If I hadn't seen rainbows near sun in clear skies as if to a loom answers of questions questioned, questioned inside. If I hadn't been pulled outside to bow my head, point to the vastness of the sky and at the tip of my finger have a shooting star arrive that night. If I hadn't heard a voice say you have fidelity in the law and it will be used as your trench, I might not have learned that the Dogans of West Africa once every 50 years parade the reflection of star Amma B around A wearing headdresses that resemble telephone poles because their eyes have not been corrupted or that the African Chinese, Irish Cherokee and Blackfoot understanding of stars in me is on earth as it is in heaven and that the experiences, testimonies, visions and synchronicities of blood memory, I continue to speak. I may not have recognized an ancestor saying I come from mystics who beneath, who believe in hearing the inaudible, touching the intangible and seeing the invisible. My son, I will speak for you. Those scriptures cut your testimony from eyes that once knew light, your breath upon waters. I'm going to start this again between what you read and what and I have a few more minutes so excuse me, I was emotionally distraught from that. Yeah, you know, we tend to forget to breathe, trying to move on. I'll do this one. My son, I will speak for you. Those scriptures passed testimonies from eyes that once knew your light. Watched you walk upon waters, oversea floor upon a mammal animal bird and sea creature obey your seasons will, my son. Your garden legacy deed you master alchemist chef, cook sorcerer of elements, you feed multitudes, flavoring nature's seed womb, my son. Why falsify your records, hide your light, cut circuitry from innocent eyesight, masquerade one vow well with idle sacrifice, my son. Unclean spells stray from holy wellness degenerates, generations, my son. An icon reads, think not I come to bring peace on earth, I come not to bring peace but a sword. Why destroy peace in your wheel done? You are reason life on earth rolls through heaven. Instead greed eats away trees, disconnects energies, deviates gravity, habitats for humanity, erodes truth, integrity, destitute, disputing life routes they brand, they brand, they brand. Although, although waiting a Messiah's though your soul or light is not required, my son. Too many religious saviors, too many competitive death plans. Too many eyes look away from your radiance to revere, wrote man, my son, I need not wait for your return. Your morning light never ceases for what I yearn, you are my testimony, my soldier and my light, my son. You not born of man or woman, you true light of this world. You, my son, our holy reed, our spark of light that never sleeps in heart and lung as we breathe, my son. Eyes will always rise to acknowledge you. And that's from this book, Synchronicity. And please pick this one up if you don't already have it. Thank you so much. Thank you so much, Teri. Everyone, I just is like, I feel like a sub-party in my head of just pure joy listening to all of you. And there's so much synchronicity in this room. I remember years ago that Terita was in a book called A Company of Prophets. Yeah, and I did not know you, but I was in the same book. And it's like to come back, you know, to people. It's just, yes, I got to put on my glasses now. Okay. Carla Brundridge is our next author. Carla is a Bay Area based poet, activist, and educator. Actually, I just think she's just the most brilliant woman. You know, I look on Facebook and Carla is heading out to Africa to do something major. And I'm just, and to teach, I have learned so much from you because of your daring and because of your ability to walk and new shoes, to go someplace that perhaps some of us would not have had the daring to go and then to bring back those stories for us. One story you brought back was how there was a place you lived in, in Africa, where people learned that you have to grieve, that you have to cry, allow yourself to grieve, do not hold it in so that you clear that energy and can move forward. And I remembered that story the first time you told it. I just thought, what a, what brilliance, what graceful brilliance that you're bringing back from Africa to us. Now, she's, all I can say, she's brilliant. She, but I'm saying that about everyone in the room because it's the truth. She, we did this book called Words Upon the Water, where the money went to support Katrina. And I had never done that before. The idea that poets have the power to change the world. We have the power to give to communities that need it so badly. And you showed us that. You showed us that particularly by the fact that at nighttime Carla would go to this one place, I don't know the name, and so that she didn't have to pay, she didn't have to give any of the money away. The money could have gone to everyone that the groups were involved with in Katrina. The book was made by hand so that there was not a chance of the money going outside those that needed it most. And I was just so, so in awe of that. Beautiful. And quite a few people in the room were in this book. She also has published a swallowing word of melons. I love that title. It was published by Ishmael Reed, publishing company in 2006. Her poetry short stories and essays have been widely anthologized and can be found in Hip Mama, Literary Kitchen, Lotus Press, Bamboo Ridge Press, Vibe and Conch Library, excuse me, Literary Magazine. She holds an MA in education from San Francisco State University and MFA from Mills College. The most recent project is co-editing a collection called Colossus Home with Sarah Beale, which features poets from around the Bay Area. It's an amazing, amazing book. Please give a warm welcome to Carla Brundridge. Thank you. Thank you so much, Kim. I'm so honored to be here today and to be in this book. It's such a beautiful book. Thank you for all your hard work. Yeah. I also want to just bring up my mom, Catherine Takara, who I'm so honored to have a mom who was part of, I guess, Oakland Poets way before I was. And it was because of my mom that I met Ishmael and I met Kim. And eventually I met Opal Palmaradisa, whose birthday it is today. And Opal is in this book. And her poem, I Will Not Let Them Take You, you should buy the book just for that poem. It's like, I think that one poem, like, made me want to be a poet, to be honest. Such a great poem. So when I was getting my MFA at Mills, I was in a class and there was a conversation around the Black Arts movement. And I remember a student in the class saying, well, is that really a thing? And I remember thinking, at Mills, we had all these great opportunities to do really weird projects. So I decided I would write and perform a poem about the Black Arts movement. And it's in here. And it's mostly written from memory, but also from the book we were reading in that class. And so if there are errors in here, forgive me. It was kind of like one of those reactionary moments in time. So Black Arts movement. To be young, gifted, and black in 1957 marks the first point of the Black Arts movement on the American timeline. It meant using the back door, Brown versus Board of Education, no voting rights, Black Panthers, Kujichagalia, self-determination, Umoja, Unity, Ujama, Cooperative Economics, 10-point plan, free school lunches, taking back our streets from the police, arming ourselves. Black Arts' self-love and self-liberation, creation of our own literature, calls to action, founding of Umbra Poets Workshop, which became a magazine by Ishmael Reed, David Henderson, Calvin and Nora Hicks, and other true New Yorkers who move west. Black Arts is Barbara Christian, chairing African-American studies at UC Berkeley. Leroy Jones, graduating from a beat poet to the School of Pan-Africanism and Black Nationalism, emerging as Amiri Baraka, poet, instigator, novelist, playwright, cultural critic, trickster. The country is in turmoil. Do you integrate? Do we self-separate? Some BAMs repatriate to Ghana, who knew why the Caged Bird sang Maya Angelou, founder of Association for Women of African Heritage, member of the Harlem Writers Guild. Then there were actors, John O'Neill, Tom Dent, founders and co-collaborators of Umbra, of the Free Southern Theater members of SNCC, who influence the San Francisco Mime Troop and are featured in New Black Voices. Black Arts' Mary Love-Lace O'Neill, abstract artist and professor at UC Berkeley, and also in New Orleans with John O'Neill and Tom Dent working, writing with SNCC, CORE, the Free Southern Theater, Adrian Kennedy explored the psyche of the Black woman in Funny House of a Negro. Black Arts' poet, intellectual Eugene Redman, claiming the most influential schools in the Black Arts movement were not New York School but Merritt College, SFSU, UC Berkeley, UCLA, and the HBCUs. Avacha Gellantro, Bay Area DJ, musician, poet, producer, and Tizaki Schonges for color girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow enough, QR, poem in one hand, pen in another, bops his jazz rhythms at the elbow room, pitches words from right to the far left. James Baldwin said, societies never know it, but the war of an artist with society is a lover's war. The artist does at best what lovers do, which is to reveal the beloved to themselves and with that revelation make freedom real. Black is afros like golden halos, uplifted fists, Black is power is, Black is Black Arts is a way to reclaim power, celebrate beauty, and discover voice. Thanks. So that was my answer to that question in the class. And I still see this as a work in progress poem. This next one I'm going to read is also in the book, and it's mostly influenced by my work with previously incarcerated youth, which I've done and then left because it's very hard and then done again. So I'm back in that situation again. So this poem is, I was thinking about it, I guess literally after Breonna Taylor, that's what inspired me to go back in my mind and write this poem. So it's a, sorry, but Ishmael Riedtels don't censor. So it's called Take Her Down. Here it is. Take her down. Break her arm. Touch her breast. And circle her neck. Take her down. Put your foot behind hers. Take your knee behind hers. It fits nicely there. Gently push. She will lose balance. Hold her face to the floor. If she cries out, release the pressure a bit. After she goes down, put your knee on her back, but not with all your weight and crush her spine. You need two to three people for a take down. You have to work together. If your partner does not have your back, it can quickly become a dangerous situation. Report to your higher ups when you get back to the office. Come up from behind her. Put your arms through hers like a dance move. Arms and legs move in coordination. Each officer takes one side, so that you can easily ease her gently to the ground. No one's back gets injured and it's easier to cuff her. If she struggles, release the tension, not the grip. What happens if her clothes come off? Generally speaking, you must proceed as if this is a person. As if this person is a danger to herself and you. At this point in time, clothing her. And if she cries out, again, women are very manipulative. We'll say anything to gain your trust, but you cannot trust them. They have already done something to get them in this situation as it is. And now that they are in trouble, they suddenly want your help. No. All cries for help are false and should be ignored. My last one. Yes, I have time. I think I have time. The revolution will be televised with apologies to Gil Scott, Heron. The revolution will be televised. Can't you see it's happening right now? Last night was Phase 6, shock and awe. Phase 1, destroy the warriors. Define warriors any way you want. Every society has warriors. Our warriors are being taken down to the ground. Phase 2, cut out our tongues, change the language, redefine the words to have new meanings, liberal, entitlement, crime, guilty, apology, fake, real, footprint, cloud. Phase 3, take our religion, give us icons and devices to worship. Bow your head in text. Bow your head in text. And displace the people. Phase 5, destroy the family unit. Undo the matriarch. Let the women come together for no against, no for, no against, no for. The safety of our children, born and unborn, our bodies sacred and trampled. Phase 6, shock and awe. Replay violent deaths over and over for analysis. Was he really choking? Could he really breathe? Did he bring a phone? Was their skirt really too short? Did they ask for it? Was their back really turned? Tell kids it's okay to dance on the heads of their dead opponents. Introduce the extreme right. I'm right. I'm right. Ask the extreme left. Who's left? The revolution will be televised. Turn off all the lights. Keep them on. Are we running out of time? Are we running? Make sure you have a gun. Lock your doors. Lock them tight. The revolution will be televised tonight. Thank you. All I can say today is I'm so happy I'm here. Because it's a lesson and not only the gratitude to be in a room with such talented artists but also it's pure happiness even though I was scared a little bit by Amber but it was worth it because it was so beautifully written. And thank you Karla for taking work like Gil Scott Herons and bringing it in a way that really is so much apropos to what we are experiencing right now. We probably should say everyone please do vote. Judy, I could use a book but I just want to say that Judy is one of the most fabulous women I've ever met as well as courageous. I listened to Judy's stories about her earlier work and I put her in my dissertation because the bravery she showed in being a part of a movement that changed so much about life for African Americans in the United States I'm talking about the Black Panthers and the things that were done to make sure that we had ways to help our community with regard to sickle cell anemia with regard to the food program for kids even they changed the way we viewed ourselves it was very empowering and you may not always understand that but if you sit with the knowledge of the things they did you will understand or at least I hope you will Judy has there are so many books that she has written and so much of it to me has very much of a very feminist view about who we are and I love some of her titles the female complaint yeah that's every day for me de facto feminism I essay straight out of Oakland I just think that she is just such a talented not only a writer but someone who has really been a part of something that's changed how we view ourselves as African Americans to which I'm very grateful please give a warm welcome to Judy Juanita good afternoon I bow to you I bow to the great Avasha I bow to Ms. Terita I don't know you I bow to you I'm so happy to be in your presence but I have to say that this is a very dangerous place to be there's not there's not a mystery why there are so few of us here today we're in a war we know that and we're always fighting so this is a break and a chance to replenish you know so hearing this story and being moved to tears and being upset by it you know hearing Avasha always invoking our elders and our ancestors always reminding us get on your case and stay on it you know so you know I'm just I'm just very moved by today because I know that getting filled up like this means I have a ways to go and I have things to do this is on I believe page 159 of the of Black Fire is it on 159 what Bruno was from Brazil it's on 197 Bruno was from Brazil a prose poem I'm from Oakland and I'm not a statistic yet but New Year's Eve I left the Bank of America at 2.30pm the news that night flashed on my bank it was the scene of the last homicide of the year at 3.20pm which meant I dodged a bullet by 45 minutes witnesses say two Latino males and two African American males had a parking lot altercation the Latino driver used an ethnic slur and one of the Black guys pulled out a gun and shot him the two Blacks drove off witnesses say and Bruno who was from Brazil and delivered pizza for God's sake died on the spot now you know the last word in the guidebook for new arrivals is nigger and I know poor, poor Bruno heard the word a thousand times delivering those pizzas some niggers on 90th avenue want mushrooms, salami, chicken only niggers want combos like that you my nigger when you get money from niggers check the counterfeit nigger, niggers Bruno watch out poor Bruno the word probably came off his tongue and he didn't know you could call a Black person a nigger and get other scorn and contempt like down south where they just ignored it and kept their inner dignity but Bruno you don't call a real nigger a nigger that's like a death wish are you crazy suicidal certain words are like gods they command respect nigger is a god I'm so sorry for Bruno he was a sacrificial lamb because that's what you have to do with gods you have to appease them give them a little something something and I know Richard Pryor went to Africa after he made 50 million dollars off the word and came back with religion stop using the word and use crack instead but he didn't stop folks from using it he just made the word an academic issue shall we nigger, shall we not nigger forget Dick Gregory's autobiography called nigger no a Harvard law professor writes a book called The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word nigger is a god nigger made millions now it has a career and the country's leading black intellectual a guy named Skippy finds one of the first novels written by a black titled what else our nigg so I'm proposing a constitutional amendment excuse me on the use of the word there are simply days when it is dangerous to use the word and one of those days is Friday night and another of those days is Saturday night okay on Martin Luther King's birthday abstain Christmas it goes without saying the season is the reason and proceed with caution on the fourth of July fireworks drinking and the use of the word by the wrong people don't mix this is a poem I think it's a poem called called note to my younger self and when I wrote it I said nobody's going to publish this but Ishmael Reed and Tennessee Reed did publish it in conch so I'm very grateful that we have a consortium of fraternity a a group of black writers and editors who understand our language our cause our reason for writing note to my younger self dick don't do friendship missy dick isn't a friend dick doesn't console dick is a missile long range, short range remember think, sweetie missiles sits in a silo in a weapons launcher it carries a payload dick is not your bosom buddy dick is a war monger dick is a missile one that rapes and pillages remember dick is not even a friend to its owner dick ain't about loyalty or comforting you dick doesn't give a lick about peaceful coexistence dick leaves bodies strewn over fields bloody legs open skulls glazed eyes dick rapes women children men in front of women children men it's called purview dick doesn't make babies it doesn't even make sperm dick shoots sperm think, sweetie did dick take your prenatal vitamins? did dick's ankles swell in the last month? is dick walking around with stretch marks? dick is a surface to surface missile waiting for a general big bubba tubba to give it the go dick aims to cover the distance between your lady parts and your beating heart what happens when missile meets target? explosion not a pretty sight dick is to friendship as puttin is to trump dick being the operative word dick made this country and don't you forget it dick on a stick otherwise known as gun kill the buffaloes in a bid to extinguish the Indians dick enslave the Africans dick ain't nobody's friend and here you thought dick was a night out a few drinks in a friendly fuck not so every conquest dick makes is a giant step for mankind and that's a misnomer dick don't do kind dick does war dick wants the Middle East now dick is about override dickocracy dick attitude dick atrocity dick wants women in veils and out of cars if women who think they're free really saw dick ravishing choir boys blind slender pushing grieving widows onto their husbands funeral pyres we would abhor every single acquiescence the world over and dick would die on the spot shrivel smaller than Harvey Weinstein's mogul dick die dick die die even the proxy dildo dick die silence quell stop dick stop it don't get pious about donald trump he's one dick in a billion women of the world unite lisistrata is postmodern revolution lisistrata is a dick destroyer lisistrata is universal antidote let's make lisistrata a verb the way OJ became a verb he OJ'd her she lisistrata dick with a weapon at her disposal reverse the tactic like the pitiable girl in shinler's list calling out goodbye ju goodbye ju a worst example of learned hatred instead we take that spleen and call dick out goodbye dick goodbye hard violent dick goodbye you son of a dick we should all be so disgusted by this perversity that we boycott the academy awards and the golden globes as the pimps and hoes conventions they are orchestrated by clones of the ones who acquitted trump we should stop their obscene sexual congress dick to dick to dick to dick to dick to dick spenishing the noobile bodies they peed and shat upon we should be so horrified that we can't bear the sight of dick the hypocrisy of a lot of them the ones who know the ones who identify the other way dick is not your friend sweetie dick doesn't need your nectar dick craves aspiration yours. Uses it until it asphyxiates on it. Love alone conquers this hardness. Deep in the heart where dickless, soft, alive, and responsive to ourselves, we can shape a world without missiles, drones, assault rifles, towering, penile shaped skyscrapers, waiting to be penetrated by foreign objects. This truth is yours in abundance, my dear. It can make dick dust. Did anyone see that coming? Wow. Wow. Judy Juanita, a name that will go through the annals of not only good writing, but also away with words. I'm very sorry that Milani Clay couldn't be here today. She's ill, but I said I would read her poem, so please bear with me. She's just a wonderful writer, and she's from Oakland. She's a graduate of Howard University and the University of San Francisco Urban Education and Social Justice Program, and she's a current student at the SF Creative Writing Program. She strives to be forever in school. I like that. Milani bridges worlds with her words and will one day build a fort out of books written by black people. I'm waiting to see that. So here is her poem, Black Woman is God, part one. My fingertips craft spells, weave mythology into coiled strands of air. My cheekbones be sharp as my tongue, honed against stories piled at my feet, hurled by hands incapable of accepting my divine. They are afraid of me. I know, because sometimes I'm afraid of me too. Struggle to accept I not only contain multitudes, I am actually all there is. The edges of the universe are cloaked in the same inky night as my skin. The sun forever reaches to caress my cheeks just once more. Before muddy, fetid, fetid shores swallowed my children whole. My feet stamp legacy into red clay. My body brought the moon close enough to forever dance with the sea. They are scared. I rightly remember who I am. Might remember my smile can bring and end wars. My magic brings the stars closer to witness miracles, twinkling their excitement, creating celestial arrangements. For me to read before I dream, visions of a world rid of alabaster parasites, behind closed lids my pupils contain the unknown depths of the ocean. Every tear shed holy water flowing freely down my face. Thank you. So our next, I should, I want to say our next person is the divine and sublime. Now Michael wore and Michael, yes, I said it. Michael is divine and sublime. So I'm so glad you're here today, Michael. And I want to say a bit about Michael. He is a literary, he, Michael's literary honors include a 2021 San Francisco Art Commission Artist Award and the 2020 Berkeley Poetry Festival Lifetime Achievement Award. His books include a poetry and protest from Emmett Till to Trayvon Martin, the Armageddon of Funk. I love that one. I love all your books. We are all the black boys in power lines, a decade of poetry from Chicago's guide complex. He is a San Francisco Library Laureate and recipient of the Creative Work Fund Award for his multimedia project Tracing Poetic Memory. He's a Penn Oakland Josephine Miles Award winner for excellence in literature. I could go on and on and on. But let me just tell you, Michael is just a wonderful writer and we're just really happy to have him here. So please give him a warm welcome. Michael wore. Who is she talking about? Was great to see all of y'all. I have two shout outs I want to give before I read. And the first one is to Kim, Dr. McMillan, for making black fire come to life. And we know how difficult it is to bring a book or an anthology to life. So it's a real cultural contribution to American literature. And I want everybody to have this book. And I feel like a voucher when I saw who was in the book and I saw that, oh my God, my work is in the same book with James Baldwin. I had that reaction to a number of the poets in this book because there's many of my literary hero, my poet heroes from childhood that are in this book, Gwendolyn Brooks, Amir Baraka and Niki Giovanni, people who I actually had the opportunity to become friends with later in life. I mean, I actually had dinner with James Baldwin. So, but to be in a book with them, that's even better than having met and published some of them. So I'm going to, I also want to give a shout out to the library. And I want to urge all of you to vote yes on Prop F to ensure that the Library Preservation Fund is around for another 25 years. That's very, very significant. So yes on F. So I'm going to share three poems. And the first of them is in the anthology. It's actually the title poem of my third book, The Armageddon of Funk. And so I'm going to start with that one. The Armageddon of Funk and Memory of James Brown, 1965 to 2006, which is a year he passed. If I rule the world every day, it would be the first day of spring, the godfather of soul. Wat rebels, a tethered communate walks in space. T.S. Eliot, Nat King Cole and Sir Winston Churchill die. Malcolm is murdered. The grateful did is born. Seiku Sesamabutu steals and sells to Congo. Che crosses Lake Tanganyika as Tatu to take it back. Ginsberg howls and speaks flower power in the city where I first imagined. The entire northeastern United States blacks out. The Voting Rights Act is passed. U.S. troops deploy at Dang Nang Vietnam, gang of four ascends. My only worry at 10 years old is what will happen to the world if James Brown dies. Monks rebel. Pluto is no longer a planet. The sun eclipses. Robert Creeley, Coretta Scott King and the King of Tonga die. Monks are murdered in Miramar. The did still play live. Congo holds its first true election since Patrice Lumumba's assassination. Howl turns 50. Jack Hirschman, communist, its poet laureate of the city where I first imagined. Did live heatwave since the dust bowl plagues Midwest. Voting rights are extended another inadequate quarter. Saddam Hussein hanged. Forbidden City evicts Starbucks. Thank you. This second poem is in another anthology. This is the anthology Reimagine America which is relatively new. I'm going to recite this poem that I always like to say when I read this poem that it was written before Trump somehow became president. It's called I Like My Neofash is Naked. I want the roles of our justices open. Unfettered by croaking, cloaking fig leaves. Naked in their nakedness. Rows of corporate fed access flaunted. Abandoning rituals of false denial. They're rulings free of full equivalency. Statistical dishonesty and classless level playing fields. I want my NTV. My inward offending overtly. Niggerized and righteous hatred. Spoken in non-hyper justified gibberish. Decoded in unconstrained, embedded, applauded, marketed ignorance. Managed to transparent, instructed, malevolent for those non-fluent in the ways of this nefarious, nigger-distracted world to see. I want our backwardness blatant and walking forward. Scarred knuckles scraping our glorious amber plains. Flagellating our virus infected brains on the prairies of flat earthrism. Climate hucksterism denying the science of the sun. I want the logic of legislative inquisitions those democratic knife fights held increasingly in the dead of night that injure my nieces, my sister, my mother, my wife. The sadistic incursions into their wombs. The state dictated procedures in the sacrilegious name of submission. I want to see them disintegrated in sunlight. I want homeland spine under pretense patriotism. The criminalizing of conversation of everyday people, every data second of the data driven day. The jacking of simple assumed liberties under cover of the stultifying fog of fear and supremacy practiced loosely in the public square. I want the legalization of lawlessness, the deputizing of moderate lynching promoted in photo ops encircled by emotionless faces of neighbors conditioned for murder sanctioned by their God. It has been done before. I want the end of these days. Thank you. This last piece I'm going to read is in the book. It's in the anthology and I want to encourage as someone else said earlier anyone who doesn't have it make sure you get it. Get copies for your friends and enemies. I'm not going to read the entire piece. This is a piece that I've been adding names to since 2018. It's unfortunately a very long poem not because it's a long poem but because it names victims of police killings. I'm going to read an excerpt from it. This is what not to do an unfinished poem. For people who don't have the book this is a way of saying if you want to see the whole poem you have to get the book. What not to do an unfinished poem. Breathe Eric Gardner choked. Sell Lucy's. Resist to death. Stare Lamont Hunt shot in back. Make a Kai Gurley a drawing sound shot accidentally. Stand Amadou Diallo in vestibule. Carry wallet. I just realized I'm reading the full version. I'm sorry I'm going to go to the short version. I'm reading from the book. Breathe Eric Gardner choked. Sell Lucy's. Resist to death. Stand Amadou Diallo in vestibule. Carry wallet. Look out of place. Act suspicious. 41 fired 19 bullets kill. Park tiny hagrathy on side of road. Talk on sale on side of road. Shot on side of road. Drive Philando Castile with broken brake lights. Carry legal firearm. Announce you have a gun. Shout not reaching for gun. Shot five bullets to the heart. Approach after Grant the police. Beg not to shoot. Nail shot anyway in back. Carry Tamir Rice toy gun shot with real bullets. Carry remain visible in prescription bottle. Shot two bullets to torso. Not carry Keith Lamont Scott a gun when told to drop it. Shot. Be Natasha McKinnon schizophrenic. Be superhuman stunned while shackled 50,000 votes to death. Be John Crawford an imminent threat. Shop for Wal-Mart air rifle. Carry Wal-Mart air rifle at Wal-Mart. Talk on cell phone at Wal-Mart. Shot with real bullets at Wal-Mart. Be George Floyd a suspect. Be a seven foot six foot seven black man. Be claustrophobic. Affixated knee on neck while handcuffed. Run Stefan Clark through grandmother's yard. Carry cell phone. Shot 20 bullets. Fired eight hit primarily in back. Jog Ahmed Arbery shot two bullets kill while hunted. Sleep Breonna Taylor in bed. Shot eight bullets kill. Sleep Richard Brooks at Wendy's. Flea for daughter's birthday. Point to the taser over shoulder. Shot two bullets in back. Walk Elijah McClain home. Look sketchy. Play music. Wear ski math. Shop for ice tea. Carry ice tea. Act crazy. Whisper. Can't breathe. Beg to go home. Be superhuman. Be anemic. Be suspicious. Be on something. Be undetermined. Choked to death. Breathe. Not that he's absolutely brilliant so I won't do that. But thank you very much for reading Michael. Our last author is DeVora Major. DeVora is what I learned from DeVora is that you can create poetry that goes to other worlds and that is created so well that you forget that it's just a poem. You start to see the pictures in her art and they're just absolutely beautiful. And if you haven't picked up a copy of her Caliphia's daughter do, it is not only brilliant and I don't think she has anymore but it is once again the poetry takes you to another world. Now she is a professor. She's also was the, were you the seventh poet laureate? Excuse me, third poet laureate of San Francisco and I remember when that happened it was just beautiful to have someone that you know as a poet laureate. Just beautiful. And she, her work is, she works as a playwright. She works as a poet, a writer, an editor, a writing coach, a performer. She is just an all-around wonderful and I'm having to use the word brilliant all day. Brilliant person. Please give a warm welcome to DeVora Major. Hi, you know I have to say I really liked hearing everybody's work that I'd read on the page. There's something about the way everybody brings their own words to light that I find just really inspiring and healing and all of that. So I'm going to read a few. I appreciate Avacha with the elders and I, I always like, I appreciate the fact that we do acknowledge like the Ramatu Sholone and like that but I also feel like I always want to acknowledge our indigenous people and so I'm going to start with that idea with a, this is called Island Woman Speaks of Tongues and this is not literally my great great great grandmother story but she was stolen from Yoruba land and brought to the island of Elutra in the island and actually started Obia there and so but, but it's not literally what I, what I know of her story is not in this poem, it's in another poem but I wanted that idea of somebody speaking their truth. They took my words, all of them, not knowing that in my home I spoke many languages, not only to family traders and voyages but to hawk and chimpanzee, sandpiper and dolphin. They took my tongue, gripped my throat tightly and commanded me to use only their words, yes sir, madam please, limited ideas that did not tell of spirit or legacy. We will not speak of the bakra who as we tossed in the belly of their demon ship tore into me like a spear chasing the neck of a lion spilling my blood yet leaving inside the seedling of a son, my son whom I taught all my remembered languages until he understood wind and star and smoothed his freedom road whistling the birds to quiet their song as he passed by sending a raven to my window to let me know he was now a man unfettered. Some call me Obia woman, ask me to make juju so they could become invisible so all the bakra would dry up and die so we could return home but now I only know of healing song and the gift of animal languages and learned words the invaders rapist and slavers would not teach me like struggle, survive, surmount. This is a part of a longer performance piece I'm making and it's called a mother's how. This is for here, I'm going to go around the globe of howling mothers as we do. Night sound dirges of sirens and gunshots screeching tires and assaulting voices become bricks around your heart become an ever tightening noose around your neck as the bridge of faith rocks and creaks beneath your feet hampered by age and poor construction. What if it was you heart torn and bleeding by the call the knock at the door still hearing your son's voice breaking into your restless dreams mama I love you just as he exploded into death's domain you who carried the grief of the mother who lost one and then another child you waking up cold night sweat after sweat after night after night when gunfire blast around your home you with the coroner seeing your child cold but not yet stiff lying on a metal table your tears bathing his face because at that moment it wouldn't matter if it was a cop obeying supremacist training or a neighbor consumed by confusion and rage all that matters is that flutter who quickened in your womb that baby who suckled your breast that child who climbed into your lap to pull your ears and give you sloppy kisses that new who brought wild street flowers for love that young man who hugged you every day as if it was his last I love you mama was now dead and then consider if you would hear anything or only whale a howl that echoes mothers around the world who have felt that acid seared their hearts a mother's howl a mother's howl this one is from the anthology and I'm reading it for Kenneth Harding's mother as well as him because if you say a name they are not dead city values a san francisco poem two dollars in the city of san francisco is not quite enough for a sunday newspaper but you could get a leader of generic soda pop and have a bit of change maybe two large organic apples or a medium order of fast food fries one tin of quality black shoe polish or one condom from a club vending machine or one thigh with a side at church's chicken or the life of one coco skin 19 year old roughly trying to become a man who for want of a two dollar bus transfer was shot in the back of his head and I'll finish with this one also in the anthology writing love all I want to write a love poems in this season of rotting flesh and hollow bellies in this year of hidden corpses and shrapnel graveyards all I want to write a love poems to the one whose breath will mix with mine for the lips I will taste for the hips I will encircle for the sap I will share all I want to write a love poems about shining eyes and sweats perfumes about promises made and kept about secrets and fears shared and revealed in this year of the buried city this decade of the hunger crop this century newly begun yet already with thousands upon thousands of limbs torn all eyes burnt out hearts eviscerated all I want to write a love poems I don't want this job of recording the children's despair the mother's grieving the father's misery the son's brutalization the planet's storms and fires it's all too much for me my eyes fill with salt and become blurred and only love poems will make it better will clear the way but all around me those others who I already love in knowing and as strangers are being murdered or enslaved starved or tortured imprisoned or forsaken and the poems I want to write evade me until I am left with nothing but this how wedged between my teeth all I want to write our love poems about blue kissing my morning lemons tart and fresh flavoring my afternoon's crescent moons arching away from venus' sparkle in a star hungry sky oh I want to write a love poems all I want to write is love thank you thank you so much so how many of us are going to write love poems I don't know I am and I want to also especially thank shana and and john we couldn't do this without you you're always so nice and so clear about your mission here and about really opening the doors particularly for people of color to really have their voices heard and that's major thank you thank you so much and as you know we have books to the side and they're twenty five dollars and if you're looking at this on the internet youtube channel if you um there'll be a link where you can also once you finish get also um I love it once you finish your breakfast you can too can buy a twenty five dollar book but we hope that you will and um thank you everyone each one of you for being here and if you have questions please you know we can we can talk let's talk because we're artists