 Good afternoon Everyone thank you for coming. I'm John Smalley a librarian with the public library with the General Collections and Humanities Center Which is on the third floor of this very building where we have about 70,000 poetry volumes literary criticism and drama in English plus whatever is also in the 41 languages that we collect Also on the third floor. So if you have time feel free to check that stuff out While we're waiting for a few late comers. I want to Acknowledge our community and also mentioned two or three events that are coming up in the next week On behalf of the public library We wish to welcome you to the unceded ancestral homeland of the Romitr Shaloni who are the original inhabitants of the San Francisco Peninsula as Indigenous stewards of this land and in accordance with their traditions the Romitr Shaloni have never ceded nor forgotten nor Forgotten their responsibilities as the caretakers of this place as guests We who reside in their traditional territory Recognize that we benefit from living and working on their traditional homeland We wish to pay our respects by acknowledging the ancestors elders and relatives of the Romitr Shaloni community and we wish to affirm their sovereign rights as first peoples as As Many of you know we have poetry readings regularly the second Thursday of each month in this very room 6 p.m Another poetry event that is coming up on June 5th Sponsored by the African-American Center, which is on the third also on the third floor and actually the director of the center Is here shawna you want to raise your hand? She's in the room somewhere helping me out today. Yeah shawna So on June 5th the program is Sisters Across Oceans a reading commemorating It's a poetry exchange between West Africa Hawaii and California That's on June 5th on June 15th the author Chris manjapra will be discussing his new book Black Ghosts of Empire about emancipation and its aftermath. That's on June 15th There are flyers on the table for some of these events and other things You may have heard also June this June as they're celebrating the hundredth anniversary of the publication of James Joyce's Ulysses So there's a ton of events and exhibits on that theme Anyway, check that out or check our address SFPL.org the events section so without further ado, I'd like to Call up to the microphone JK Fowler the publisher of nomadic press today's event is a partnership with nomadic press the first of three Programs this summer and this is also the very first program of summer stride the library's biggest Annual program each year our literacy program So we are thrilled to be able to work with nomadic press and their talented readers And to kick off summer stride in this fashion. So please give a warm welcome to JK Thank you very much John and thank you everyone for coming out today to join us on this Sunday John asked I say a little bit about nomadic press. I think a lot of us know about nomadic press, but it's Wonderful to be here as a part of this three-part series with the library We also have an exhibition in August with Shauna as the lead on that For the painting the streets book. So you'll start to see pieces of the painting the streets book exhibited In the library in August. I believe August to November. So it's gonna be up for quite a while The work we do at nomadic press is publishing and events. It's really community weaving We focus on the hyper local we weave relationships on a national and now international level and We try to stay as grounded and tethered to our people as possible And that enables us to kind of continue to weave and do the work that we do So the books are almost secondary to the weaving. They're beautiful. They're amazing. They're wonderful They're a huge part of what we do But the the support that nomadic press authors give to each other give to their communities The weaving that happens is really what we're all about So it's a pleasure to be here to weave a little bit with all of you today I'm gonna go ahead and introduce the first reader Lauren Wheeler Whose book is there on the the right side of the screen? But literally just got these copies the other day and Lauren has seen it for the first time today, so Lauren Wheeler writes poetry fiction and about the places where the personal the political and pop culture intersect a recovering slam poet she tried twice competed at the national poetry slam and has featured at Cornell University Where she studied English literature as well as in Los Angeles Miami and throughout the San Francisco Bay Area Lauren sometimes contributes to black nerd problems and her work has appeared in publications such as Pank Motor monkey bicycle and the nervous breakdown She lives in West Oakland with her spouse kid and the two and two brown dogs And she's at fighting words on Twitter if you want to follow. Let's give a warm welcome to Lauren Thank you for the invitation or read today to both JK and to the library And thank you all for showing up Thinking about what it meant to do a reading on a Sunday afternoon. I decided to pull out some pieces that Sort of make me think about what my childhood was like growing up in Chicago So I'll start with this one family history A hundred people watch open mouth. There's two women run through Roseland chasing my grandmother Rina's first husband with an ice pick My great aunt Aline and her best friend Julia Browning will eventually become mothers of the church Because God helps those who help themselves offerings One each Sunday her grandmother would wake her at eight o'clock Pull the sleepy child from her side of the bed. They shared coax her into the bathroom Humming she would stand her in the tub Scrub her brown body with a coarse washcloth and ivory soap until she was clean enough to enter the Lord's house Then she'd wrap her in a big towel warmed on the door of the oven Lead her to the kitchen and the pressing comb On an unsteady kitchen chair with the torn cushion her legs twisted beneath her seat toes not quite touching the floor the humiliating steel Heated on the stovetop until it smoked drag through her hair until Claiming and stiff with grease. It was straight enough to part down the middle pulling to two smooth Short pigtails whose ends her grandmother bumped under with a smoldering curling iron Fresh from the burner beside the hot comb To Skinny and knock-kneed. I sat on a metal folding chair Ruffles a polyester nest beneath me my legs bound in thick white tights. I carefully counted out the coins from the collection plate Uncle Richard and Uncle Harry my grandmother's brothers both deacons handled the bills Pulled them from the tiny envelopes imprinted tithe That had been slipped separately into the white hollow cross with a slit near the top to collect this most holy of offerings Into a clear plastic sorter. I slit the change after counting it into piles tens Twenties whatever the denomination called for Ease the filthy coins into paper wrappers the red of the penny rolls bloody as old ink Watched as Uncle Harry slipped them into the velvet crown Royale bag to be deposited at the bank tomorrow morning Three She has been shrinking for years when I was suffering Charlie horses from growth spurts my bones heartening and elongating She experienced a different pain the pain of vanishing Her spine was compacting her bones growing hollow and pocked coral cotton seaweed on the beach She was folding into herself Like the cake she baked one Sunday after church that fell because I tap danced to near the oven pennies taped to the soles of my Sunday shoes I bounced and stomped the floor vibrating the cake my grandmother had baked for us was flat Dense as her bones were supposed to be She chided me her voice a mild molasses Contralto and instead of the cake laced with lemon zest We ate graham crackers lathered and cream cheese that night and played UNO on the card table in the living room Murder she wrote playing in the background That's one more Ghost town There's a freeway behind my house hovering over its shoulder like a falling knife I cannot tell if it is safer for my son to play in the backyard where the soil is Pregnant with lead or out front which is also pregnant with lead There's a slug still stuck in the front gate from a shooting Thanksgiving weekend 2009 my gray hatchback took a bullet in the bumper my first fall here four years later The street used to be called Grove Street now. It's called Martin Luther King, Jr. Way in Chicago where I was born I lived on Martin Luther King, Jr. Drive Hundreds of streets all over the country named for a victim of America a consolation prize It's not even a good freeway. It's a connector. It connects one shitty freeway to another shitty freeway It's not a freeway one would write songs about or poems Though I could tell you a story about the night a cougar crept across it into the plum and oak trees at the rear of my Yard and terrorized a family of raccoons My neighbor and I whispered to each other across the fence in the dark hands clutching makeshift weapons listening to chittering and then a low deep-throated growl and then a thump before the cat's pale silhouette eased down a tree trunk and Sculpt back towards the cars speeding to downtown Oakland and points further south The freeway is a dividing line Previously a red line the reason no one fixed the potholes until three years after I moved here a middle-class black harbinger of gentrification The freeway is a dividing line Maybe still a red line, but I saw a white woman with fuchsia hair jogged past earlier today Unbothered by the falling knife or the lead or the mountain lion or the dead black man This road is named after or The one shot at the corner last week So property values must be going up Thank you. I'll go ahead and introduce our next reader Next going to hear from Brandon Logan's Brandon is a poet from Oakland, California He has his MFA in poetry for Mills College and his work has been published in the Patrice Lumumba anthology and variety packs Special issue black voices of pride. He might describe himself as a rectangular sheet of honey 30 inches by 62 inches 6 inches above any surface Thank you Okay, cool We're gonna see how this goes I Told myself I would I would print out paper and I did and then I left it at work. So Forgive me for using my phone again lessons. I do not learn Thanks to everyone for being here America is a mousetrap and I keep Mistaking money for cheese. I follow a sleep midday full of paper Because I forgot that fruit could come from trees Someone takes equity with their tongue and cuts me while I try to dream of rest. I Wake up in a sea of anemones and blood The bees have all died out 20 years ago The young woman who develops a way to turn tears into bullets fails to develop a tool to make our sweat into honey in School they teach us how to use our hands as fertilizers To replace the hummingbirds whose bones now seeing white and relenting heat I Harvest my hair to braid ropes and caskets The riverbed remains dry fish bones flicker grief I Forget where I left my body. I See the mirage as a wave before it slaps me awake The sewers are the only source of water now that all the wells are empty. I Mimic apology by opening my legs in the sand Far off a star falls like nuclear fission or memory or ache Before a nation America is the grave site. I Hear on the news that despite the pollution people are living longer despite being less of themselves My neck twists into the shape of a parched tongue. I Try to think try to drink my own saliva if my body would let me in on its thirst Winter is a myth my grandmother fed me with her nails. I Try to arrange myself as a rest stop for a future beyond this I Phrase the word love with my remaining teeth. I find my body near a cliff mimicking a butterfly long extinct. I wake up again This time in a state of drowning. I mistake as relief. I hold onto speeds of light My hands blur while amber bursts across my jaw. I Repeat in the mirror today. I am alive Five times like Bloody Mary. I Conjure myself like a ghost. I See a spider walk gingerly by my feet a Glass spear mimicking window pressed between my ribs. I Reflect shades of grease and hair a sea of teeth Like all poems. I try to exhale I'm here in the tub folding over Mistaking the water for a burial My nose fills up first bubbles forming pressure across my sternum I try to exhale and diffuse the swelling across my chest, but the motion is as if I'm caught in a web incandescent Dude with many mouths. I am wanting I Lack sand to fill up my body so I know when you punch me it's not enough Satisfaction so I know you must punch me again an echo of stop hitting yourself reverberates from the mirror an Image of a face meeting the glass a hand tightening around its own neck and exhale trying to escape I Remember waking up to the feeling of a presence of myself of a ghost on top of me The hummingbirds wing a blur like thoughts piling on top of themselves like bones Like oil boiling The powder of the skillet the heat and the pain at blistering skin a flame I wake up and find pasta sauce all over the floor, and I might have been crying My hands holding back the light or my arms trying to cover my face Moments later I spill over fall from my mouth as liquid before falling over a river of exhales. I Don't know when the Sun set Perhaps this is instead the red morning. I Figured I still had the time to start over and wake up for the day. I Figured I could try another exhale to resuscitate myself. I Figured I could try again by saying Today, I think I'll try to stay alive There are questions on how you should be perceived How you should behave? How you should tongue your words carefully before speaking If you fail there will be consequences The consequences may read as excessive emotion the response. I will give you something to cry about I Understand punishment as I have to get to you first before the state does But before the state looks at you wrong before the state decides to do something with your smart ass Learn to hold back the tears with your face and the water Transmute the excess feeling Into a still surface Be clear so all that can be seen as a reflection against the iris The punishment of bodies set against what is normal denies first expression Then the body itself a Delay and recognition delays recognizing the psychological wound of a physical wound of being a wound The state looks for its father as it remains boy-like and tries to commit patricide like Zeus Because it thinks lightning is cool and that power translates to death It takes it a step further It takes a set the set further death becomes wealth under the guise of Hades hence fossil fuels hence punishment a Scale to measure your soul shame a Scale to measure your body bloody a Scale to measure the time to grieve to breathe to rest and most relevant to its success To work as a cog for its machine. I Remember when walking alone at night to be weary of even the lights. I Remember I used to have a dream, but the sand swallowed it up and I still haven't truly grieved its loss. I Can barely remember a time Or did I imagine it of a time when there was no fear That I was wrong. I know myself as a sand bank Patiently waiting for saltwater to come and drape itself over my skin. I Know that I am a home to a number of ghosts the shells left behind glasses tumbled to dust bones and grief baked by the Sun's breath I Want to feel the weight of water Dragging me over myself Crown to navel to knees slowly being pulled deeper into its tide an aroma of decay an Unyielding pressure a sweet crypt sprees between the tiniest of my holes and dimming lights. I Am a number of tiny parts amidst the waves. I Watch the Sun and moon rise and fall. I Try to make friends with the stars and pay attention to how different the colors of the sky feel against me Daybreak smishing my cheeks Sunset tickling my toes. I Cannot say who decides to rest upon me or what shape are those bodies I support with my shifting weight. I Measure the imprints that they leave in their steps Tenderly trace their outlines while I wait For the water to renew and wash me anew and then I have one more They name My whispers mirror as if I speak in a fog and my flesh often feels wet against the sunlight When looked upon I lay against the ground to remind the body is real with the concrete By noon, I am often imperceptible except on cloudy days When it rains, I know myself as a song against the house a pattern against the windowpane mirror on glass frenzied rhythm deluge refractions When I sleep I find myself in a bright room with too many lights to count. I spend time over several days That feels like hours or being punched in a gut or the slow pressure of hands around the wind pipe Breathing begins to feel like a wound I Want to be beach so I can feel acutely both the death and life buried there I Try to talk in a pattern to mimic waves or talk as if I'm in a motion of cleansing. I Talk as shutter and Royal to feel like something other than smoke When I am most alone my sweat reminds me I am ocean I Like backstroke because I don't have to worry about when to inhale when to exhale. I Build a home out of my hair But my nerves constantly unloosen the foundations If I must be a mirror against your eye, I hope that I might at least be a sight for you to find yourself I have to remember I am my mother's dream Thank you And then am I am I supposed to introduce the next reason I'm gonna I'm gonna let JK do it, so Thank you so much up next we have Nazila Jameson I also wanted to mention so Brandon Logans was published in Patrice Lumumba anthology But we'll also have a book out with nomadic press called phosphine next year So we're very excited about that Nazila Jameson is a Bay Area based performance poet author actor vocalist and emcee Her first book of poetry evolutionary heart, which you can find on the table there was released on nomadic press in 2016 Her work can also be found in culture counts magazine the racket journal issue 15 and others in her spare time Nazila enjoys writing horror screenplays and saving the day She does host the nomadic press virtual open mic every Friday on zoom what you all are more than welcome to attend from the comfort of your home and She gives the best hugs in the Bay Area. Let's give it up for Nazila Jameson Thank you for having me So I'm not classy and I don't have pieces of paper. I'm gonna read off my phone Also, I'm racing my phone because it's about to die. So let's see what happened. Shall we? This first poem I Couldn't write about what happened this week. I tried really hard, but I couldn't So this poem is about heartbreak The pain is not in the break but in the disposal of the pieces Why the shattered mirror remains on the high shelf and roots reach snakily through the jagged cracks of an earthen pot We hold on to the remains Embrace the delusion despite our chipped and distorted image Ignore dirty water leaking Walk past flowery illusion held together only by mud and memory Sometimes are irreparable some lives flourish when repotted some things are Replaceable if we are willing to risk the casual non life-threatening cuts of cleanup Grieve the empty space by filling it with the shiny new Decorate the war scars with colorful elaborate tattoos. Let go of pieces After all you were never the thing that broke. You are always what remains whole and ever here This poem is called declaration for not Gabby Petito If I ever went missing would you miss me or is my hair too brown and my eyes not blue enough for your sympathy or concern Or available photos of me too dark to look good every hour on TV Would you actually search for me or dismiss me as just another casualty of the rough streets? Because I will tell you as I live and breathe. I have no diagnosed mental illnesses No experience or interest in prostitution no drug problems to lead me permanently astray No desire to run away. So if I ever seem to disappear without a trace tell them I am an upstanding citizen. I keep my obligations. I always call or text you back Don't let me slip through the cracks into oblivion and disinterest as soon as I stop showing up Have them investigate every lover whoever said they loved me and doesn't anymore Get a solid alibi for my housemate interview my neighbors door to door This world treats a black girl like an afterthought acts like the brown girl was just never there Do not let them convince you I never existed if they tell you I was self-destructive. Do not believe it I love my life and would never intentionally leave it. There is nothing that I need to escape Keep me in the 24-hour news cycle like you do women named Lacey or Gabby or Casey Go on dateline and unsolved mysteries. Make them write articles about me Please do not let me become another unnamed statistic or vague and irrelevant memory Tell them to break into my phone search this app and find this poem until I am home Do not ever let them ever stop missing me. This is called amends. I Will not wait for anyone for me to forgive them will not stand by for their amends to put this Burden down do not need their apology to walk away from sharp and heavy things No matter how deeply the knife is embedded in my chest. I can eventually pull it out myself. I almost prefer it I reject the salve of another to soothe the hurt they cause so they can receive self-manufactured redemption There are definitely some who like to be the villain and the hero would risk another's life and well-being in order to show up Well-dressed to the rescue get off on saving the day. They very nearly destroy. I can provide my own salvation I will not be held hostage in someone else's purgatory paused until they figure out how to be human Go ahead and be sorry think remorseful thoughts scream it to the heavens to the God of your choice No need to aim your past do apologies at me Timing is everything. I'm scarred but healed you are late and I have left Let us assume the others closure and carry on So this one was inspired by a note that was left on a friend of mine's door That said hi neighbor Could you please close your windows when you cook meat in the morning because it really bothers me I'm a vegetarian and it really bothers me when you have your window open as I jog by your house in the morning And you are cooking meat So this was my response In church we ate God every first Sunday or rather we ate the body of his son our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ Washed him down with great flavored blood went home in the afternoon and chewed upon the actual flesh of the dead non-holy I Grew up country poor We only shopped in grocery stores for canned tornado food and milk our farmer relatives fed us I spent late summer snapping beans and shelling peas for freezing the first days of after-schools cleaning freshly rung chickens By spring we were usually down to hogshead cheese and fat-back sandwiches by summer Dinner was grits and fried canned tomatoes. God bless slaughter season and early harvest when I was seven I once had a pet chicken. It was then that I learned the meaning of life When I came home from school and she was silently on my plate her cage and my belly were both empty Hunger eclipsed my righteous indignation. God is great. God is good. Let us thank him for this food Vegetarianism is a religion proselyzed by city-dwelling atheists and rich folk It is an elite Western ideology Attractive to those with no immediate fear of starvation consumers of billboards and articles and philosophies Drinkers of smug self-righteousness to wash down the multivitamins when the rice cakes were not enough Humans at their basis to eat what is edible country Christians eat by the Bible Jesus gave the people fish invited us to eat his flesh Basically said fill your belly with what I have availed to you. I am no longer Christian But I eat what is available to me. My hunger eclipses your politics Perhaps I'm wrong Maybe my country grandmothers and aunties lived to their late 90s in spite of hogmars and pig knuckle sandwiches and mother earth would Prefer if we set domesticated food animals free to overpopulate and die from mass starvation What I do know though is Peter protesters are made of meat When this earth inevitably Transitions when crops dry up and blow away when the last animals have gone to slaughter due to famine and waste When there are no more chickens, there will be vegetarians. I will fill my belly with what is available to me hunger eclipses everything and Transforms saints into savers Ah, I'm actually serious. So remember that when you see me This is my last poem. I wanted to end on a really happy note. This is called so on and So you love some more because that's just what you do squeeze the broken glass in hand Embrace the jagged rocks Appreciate the warmth of your own blood flow Let us celebrate the reckless freedom of courage of walking a tightrope over a canyon with no net again Because the adrenaline rush is worth it of double or nothing on an empty stomach when the background is due Because there is a sliver of a chance that it could be a winner Your heart is already as battered and scabbed over as a wise and Hollywood stuntman. Why not? Why not run off the cliff into the bright blue air and risk falling to the cushion of a placid sea? Let us go ahead and wear raw emotions on our sleeve Glittery flesh-colored diamond cufflinks. We might attract another beautiful soulmate love some more Be the brave you might as well some day it just might kill you Something inevitably will but not today Thank you so much So it is my pleasure to introduce our next performer reader He is most recognized for his work as a co-founder and producer of homo hop group deep dick collective And for his development of the micro label sugar truck Recordings his cultural work and writing centers on intersectional dialogues on race identity Gender disability sexuality and class and popular media He served six years as a music columnist book reviewer and feature writer for color lines magazine He lives in Oakland with his partner of 20 years their daughter a neurotic standard food all and an enthusiastically territorial rescue dog Son of bifurde is his first book. Please welcome Juba Kalamka Thank y'all all for coming out today on Sunday and thank you in the zeal for reading that poem about vegetarianism and vegetarians I was a vegetarian for from 1991 to 1997 And people asked me about that and it's like what happened and I say I came out And I started eating everything Both is like non-monogamous and is bisexual at the same time 1995 so There's a poem about that somewhere I haven't ridden it yet As opposed to bringing it up I'm gonna start sad and then I'm just gonna get weird Because that's just kind of how I do This is they're all kind of short this is called days that end in Y And I wrote it the week that Michael K. Williams died the report was no forced entry or Signs of a struggle though notation of the paraphernalia present was certainly a sign of a struggle of force of entry of a good fight This is called Shule Yawa Toto School is for children and it's about cultural nationalism on the west side of Chicago in the 70s February 5th 1972 The usable restroom to the rear left had a single commode a soap streak deco gilded mirror a gummed up wall mounted powdered hand soap dispenser and a mule team Hand cleanser pitted face bowl that had seen at least four decades of cold water splashes That crisped a Menchie shopkeeper's cheeks and hid his homesickness and fading stamina from the from the afternoon customers Today I Imagine that there was also the soft bleachy dogwood reminiscent aroma of a young apprentice's daily rubouts a Morphine rise here and there Secrets of little deaths shared between little women a Kid with pocket change counted and recounted for caramel candies now and later's cherry mashes or roller skate keys Plus innumerable lavender scented whole baths The checkerboard tile floor is the only consistent motif of a recurring dream that I began having at age four The dream does not abate until just before my 12th birthday It always begins with my attentions focused on a corner's ragged molding near the floor a thick a string of thick Inky charcoal colored smoke solely begins to curl up and outward from behind the toilet I Turned to leave and rattle the doorknob, but someone has locked me in Or someone or something is blocking the door from the other side The smoke which has no smell or taste continues to billow Climbing upward and reaches me chest high before I begin to silently panic and think to scream for help but I always woke up right at that moment in a light sweat and Wondering if this was the beginning of the triumph of black nationhood me and my classmates Pledgeed our lives to every morning. This is called magic Johnson and it's about My family on the west end the west side of Chicago that I grew up on he keeps the wand zippered until just the right time the precise moment Surprise and attendant shock values being integral to the success of the performance Rice boiled up to a perfect al dente Butter and syrup running over bubble topped scorched earth trampolines up and over Belgian Congolese ego compartmentalizations salty sweet oleosaccharidic Coagulation in Tuesday morning TV spots a crispy coating delicately locking in deep-fried pepper fleck anger subconsciously rubbed into 3744 company store-bought chickens Desperately needed into virally atrophied growth centers near closing on nobby need Mississippi girls sent home to die with their mommos. I Guess I'm better off today Kipster enough to be annoyed at the irony Tag your it Run hop along run Aze may is turning shades of pale Weaving across Central Park Boulevard traffic to scoop a red rag balona loaf from a gutter corner stop That was constructed especially for her brothers to stand on It's the miracle on Ogden meeting a $1 and 35 cent an hour spiegelman 10 years earlier and eight years too late all in the same worm-holing moment of a Last poetic rip in time space fabric a pattern mastering of checkerboard and purple Fleur-de-lis sewn into booba gale and dashiki Proto Negro peering through tiny horn rims stomach rumbling around 1130 while Contemplating the contradiction of allowing white Commonwealth Edison and people's gasmen into our ancient African storefront scraping clean the paper plate of curry powder sugar Salt and starch is necessary to survive the six months with no end that predicated Diabetic and high blood pressure futures Blood is now thinner than water. You've been soaking in it girl Rib bones float through a hot sauce cloud to the ocean floor a Moment of truth above deck finds him frozen and indecisive Contemplating the quiet overness in the wet blue dark waiting to consume the home team Pulling up for a jumper his feet fail The problematic missing big toe that landed him on the disabled list last season or Is it the chain mail message an ankle transmission from the back of the line? Signaling a change in play He can make five thousand and one things from a yam Compress peanuts into phonograph needles Make boogers talk Last the soul to your last pair of shoes while spitting up chunks of lung Defy gravity's laws with the help of willows and oaks Memorize the lay of a town without pity for his folk and teach the shakers his Promethean recipes for curling Sankofas and Gina may out of hot iron in any or all of those Lurals narrated and hyzer bush sponsored minutes that got him through the 1980s transfused by sea druids blood memorizations and the knowledge that he ain't supposed to die natural death and That despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. It's going to be all right Thank you. Thank you, Juba sauna bifurde will be out in July of this year. So stay tuned for that Last but not least we have Oakland's poet laureate Ideli and Zynga who also lives in Oakland. She's a writer director playwright actress She runs the oldest North American African theater company in Oakland and produces BAMFest She like I mentioned is the poet laureate of Oakland and her works horse heaters and sorrowland oracle Are available from nomadic press and her latest release incandescent can be found from Amazon to target and From the poet. Let's give a warm welcome to Ideli and Zynga There ought to be a rule if you walk slow, you had to keep slapping I don't really like to talk a lot when I read I just want to read but today's that May need a little instruction. I Have been thinking a lot About the traits of resilience and strength that associated with people of color I have come to the conclusion That I ain't trying to be resilient Resilient means that something terrible has happened to you and you're still moving When you say that people of color are strong Especially to mothers who've lost children of our children who are now orphans strong instead of what? crazy non-existent suicidal So I bought you today a combination of my perpetual grief My raw and very dangerous rage And my mojo the first piece is called outside the lines Understanding is deep and fulfillment is true. He said in passing Well standing under knowing your things Overstood is deep, but she don't color in no lines And longs for things even in dreams her hands move along the sides of truth Finding herself at the edge of highways without lines wondering what is What to do about the things said and written that shape texture reality not related to lives lived dreams Dreamed things taken things given no denying can't be forgotten things their flow hover Hungry must be fed tended involuntary reflexive persistent lost things gathering in long shadows of new things Written on a song already playing Been playing replaying chords Things float up in the waves Red geranium seeds prayers sewn inside promises exploding in dreams Disconnected from the dreamers At intersections of the then and this now the future must stand on past actions deeds How else would it find the way if the unborn could not speak with the dead would we ever remember after transgression Transmutation Translated creation in chaos ripples across oceans rice indigo people red cloth Tails carried through centuries fill graveyards cells and coffers altering or fulfilling destiny Dividing pantheons forking past origin stories colored Overwritten kidnapped hijacked by hubris driven systems lynched on survival into the here the there the nowhere sleep She gives it to the water So here's the bones talk about oceans crossed shores of continents to recede approach different stars exodus dispersion death rebirth red geraniums rice sugar coffee red cloth tails black bodies from here there nowhere Waking every day in a sorrow older than the pain carried in bags packed roughly Leaving things behind torn overstandings now standing under rules written in polls created under Constellations with unfamiliar meanings hard to embrace the thing that erases as it consumes sweat language land Ways of life songs of days memory custom purpose honor dignity Separated a Sunder scattered waiting not melting Remembering Lately She been finding stray pieces scattered randomly between now then here there Reaching for things that the unborn know running errands for the dead Collecting legions of dismembered fractals weaving the story from there to here then and now Simple sanity could not rest well here Even if it served This would be her overstanding She don't color in no lines Because we pause from morning to mourn We park grieving To grieve Always a reason to march protests push back We speak truth to power but power don't care can't hear it any at home It's out riding around somewhere with truth in the trunk While power help us look for her and I'm tired I'm so close to weary I can see lights in the window I live outside my own mind because I'm dangerous when I'm home. I Am a straight razor. I've been cut to the bone hollowed out like a gourd poured to the dregs this is not resilience this persistence Embaring children Raising them is the intention Grandchildren is the intention old people the intention Grandpa people a divine goal this persistence is not Resilience is a war cry danced outside death door We go on because rivers flow and sunset and the natural Proceeds the perverse and in the end nature God's law wins and my anger is based in love So I am dangerous I would cross any line to protect us To see us whole well and living in our bodies alive When our souls unscathed There are no hashtags or slogans in this prayer Just black bodies pushed to the edge of Existence still existing and bearing children in resistance and this is not resilience This is a war cry Pain worn publicly like shango red Lined down the side of an ebony face. We are disturbed Very likely disturbing Yay, though we walk through the valley of madness Holding our breath. We are sore to the touch and we are sharp edge trouble Bubbling in large pots we ground to dust press the powder Disrespected and dismissed by terrified evil drinking his own Kool-Aid It won't be content just to die out I'm gonna take the whole planet with him buying and selling the last tree Have the Afro futurist considered the Euro futurist and what? What if we rode around midnight took only sharp machetes If all the wooden nickels food stamps and noose is behind with those still dreaming milk and honey and a land founded in blood Maintained in blood what solutions look like lots under freeways filled with dog houses big people sleeping And I am tired Close to weary a Hello, Gord poured out. I am dangerous. I know was at the bottom of the Kool-Aid picture and I ain't thirsty You catch me in the whirlwind Going the yellow line on the freeway to exit past Mining how I behave Under the moonlight coming smooth undone under the swoon of remembering what you done to my song off key now and The rewind is broke and we are where prayers do not land And they don't do hope And we can dance we can dance This ends somewhere and the thought of it smells like hot iron and funeral hymns And I know all the words And we can dance, you know, I have likely Always been magic. I cannot remember a time where I could afford not to be magic likely at five years old I was most likely magic already probably had been that way from the start or before Born with a call over my eyes and all likely was magic right away Trials and tribulations follow magic and they done followed me all my life I always had to be magic just a whole the idea of me Surviving odds and failing to be a statistic. I had to be magic to conjure survival Magic kept the candle lit in a storm of a life a sink or swim kind of journey Requiring all three eyes looking for the signs searching for the keys waiting in the gray every dayness of things endured Like poverty young parents No inheritance and leaky bags the secrets the way a lot But don't pay no bills. You got any intentions on paying It's a good thing that I remembered I was magic sooner than later You see later is barely ever better than sooner. Although it took out his place. You know, they do say greater later Magic is tricky And mine ain't no different and sometimes I think it worked better before I knew about it Before I learned the cost of things and how not to blow up a room with my thoughts Or to tell the truth the fools because those kinds of things were hard on fools because They bring it on themselves With their hands over their eyes unaware and bereft of magic full of privilege, but unlucky lucky, but not magic. Yeah, I Probably always been magic Ain't really no need for me to color in the lines Because magic likes its Understandings deep and it plants itself in bright pennies that grandma's wish on and grandfather's dream on seeds planted in an intentional Universe where there are no lines between Anything and most of the time the answer is yes and bright children learn how to fly Because there's sky and Magic to be tended Always been magic. I never eat from empty plates Bowl before bone My cups always Overflow good character is my companion good fortune follows me abundance sits at my table all my dreams come true They attract other dreamers Fine in and out the everywhere only sky above us That's born magic unlikely Impractical and indulgent manifestation prayed for and predicted tested true and bold Remembering to remember that's most likely always magic That's a Thank you all so much for coming. Let's give a warm welcome or warm Thank you to all of the presenters the readers tonight I deli and Zynga Brandon Logans, Nazila Jameson juba kalamka Lauren Wheeler We will stick around just for a few minutes. There are some books up on the table We do not have juba's book yet, and we do not have Brandon's book yet, but we will have those soon and If you enjoyed what you heard from any of the writers, please go up and tell them Tell them how much you enjoyed the work and what it meant to you I am gonna pass it off quickly to John again, and you'll see me over here at the table shortly. Thank you Thank you, JK and as another thank you to the readers. That was really fabulous There's more coffee and cookies for folks and please come up and take a look at the books here If you have time also come up to the third floor and look at what poetry we have up there, too Thank you all