 Thank you to everyone who has created the space who Collecting all of Pack Parker's poems and and one and one book you get to feel the weight of her words like there's This is her body. This is her opus And I like to think of poets as house builders and the house that Pat has built is one where you can be visible Emotionally alive you can talk in your own talk Wear what you need to wear cut through the bullshit and Create that space of safety that is necessary in this world And She's not afraid of conflict the dialectic That's necessary to evolve and change us and deepen how we see and and move in this world And that's what I appreciate about her work. Just like severe and necessary truth So I'm gonna be reading from her earlier Work and then I'm gonna read a poem that very much embodies that that truth that I feel is Pat Parker's words I've entered her house from deep within Nature tests those she would call hers slips up naked in blank down dark paths Skeletons of the sea this we would become to suck a ray of sight from the fire a Woman's body must be taught to speak Bearing a lifetime of keys a patient soul moves through a maze of fear in Bolts clothed in soft hues and mini candles The seasons tongues must be heard and taken and many paths built for the travelers a Woman's flesh learned slow by fire and pestle like succulent meats. It must be sucked and eaten So in reading this book and in reading the notes, you know There's like this way where I'm like Pat Park has entered my life at different times You know and sort of consciously as an undergrad but sort of unconsciously this poem was recited by Cree summers on a different world. It's the the brother poem that begins with a quote from Harriet Tubman There are two things I've got a right to and these are death or liberty One or the other I mean to have Harriet Tubman Brother, I don't want to hear about how my real enemy is the system I'm no genius, but I do know that system. You hit me with is called a fist Achoo So I wrote a poem dedicated to sake a gun who was murdered in May 2003 in Newark, New Jersey gun For sake a gun Sakea if you had the weapon of your last name, I would not know you This steady scrape against paper to transport for con lament never If in your hands the pearl handle gun my stepfather kept in the bedroom Closet, I'll give you the aim. I practice at 12 Home is where the heart is marks an average man's forehead in the trash Can is somewhere near his jewels if you brought me roses in high school wrapped in newspaper To protect me from thorns I would take them and wash ink from my fingers and the jeans and jersey flood of your girl boy body Let me be your girl forever to eternity onto my back your fingers ball point in again and again Practices the heart over I and into the morning we stash whispers where over thread thread crosses I promise I have impeccable aim Pulling a trigger loosens mustangs in your veins Piss into my mortar an old war recipe makes bullets complete Let your shower wash an asshole from the streets If blood quickly betrays its avenues for new work sidewalks his shirt tires of its thirst If his buddy drives him to the hospital or leaves him to watch the night unspool What a Jacob ladder he makes if you're shocked your life requires this exchange Come into my arms to Kia come into my arms. Thank you Arissa White come on give a hand