 Welcome everyone. So hi, welcome everyone to No Poetry No Peace, a reading and celebration of National Poetry Month. My name is Taryn Edwards and I am one of the librarians here at the Mechanics Institute of San Francisco. And this event was produced in collaboration with the San Francisco Writers Conference. Together, we strive to provide high quality learning experiences for writers at a low cost or free, usually free. I'd like to thank those of you who elected to support this event and pay a little something to attend. It really does go a long way in helping us do more in these challenging times so thank you very much. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Mechanics Institute, we are an independent membership organization that houses a wonderful library, the oldest designed to serve the public in California. The cultural event center and a world renowned chess club that is the oldest in the nation. We're founded in 1854. So right now, due to the pandemic, almost all of our activities are virtual, but I encourage you to consider joining with us. It's only $120 a year and with that you help support our contribution to the literary and cultural world of the San Francisco Bay Area. This event tonight is titled after a published collection of poems by Cheryl B's Boutet and her daughter, Dr. Angela Boutet. However, we also have a host of other local poets who will be sharing their favorite pieces with us. Cheryl will be moderating our experience tonight. So let me say a few words about her. Cheryl is a member of the Mechanics Institute who regularly shares her knowledge with our writers community. She is a multidisciplinary writer based in Oakland, who aims to shine a light on the politics of race and economics through her narratives with vivid imagery and lyrical prose. She is also an extremely genial and generous person. Her first novel, The Trail on the Bayou was published in June 2020 and No Poetry, No Peace was published in August 2020. As you'll soon find out, she is a skilled presenter, storyteller and emcee. And thank you so much for hosting this event, Cheryl. Before we get started, I just want to encourage our guests to use the chat space if they have any questions, and we aim to get to them at the end of the reading. I also will send all the registered guests a link to the event's video in a couple of days. So we are recording this event. And I hope to get that up on our YouTube space 48 hours or so. Sometimes it takes a little while to upload. Anyway, thank you so much for coming out tonight. Are we ready, Cheryl? Oh, we are ready, ready. Are we ready poets? Yes, we ready. Hi. Thank you so much, Sharon, and thank you to the Mechanics Institute for hosting No Poetry, No Peace, and thank you to all the poets for being here with us tonight. I just want to say a couple of things about National Poetry Month. Inspired by the successes of Black History Month in February and Women's History Month in March, in 1996, the Academy of American Poets organized and introduced the annual April celebration of National Poetry Month. Each year, the Academy of American Poets commissions a special poster for National Poetry Month. This year it features the words of Joy Hardrell, National Poet Laureate. And I don't know if you can see it behind me, but what Joy says is, there is nowhere else I want to be but here. I want to lean into the rhythm of your heart to see where it will take us. So let's see where all of these wonderful poets will take us. This evening, I welcome a dazzling group of poets who will each share their pro what it gives with you. And as we say, no poetry, no peace. This evening, I want to start with my first poet. I am the author of No Poetry, No Peace, a biochemist, neuroscientist, poet, and my daughter, Angela Boutin. Yeah. Thank you so much, Mom. I really appreciate it. Thank you, group. I really appreciate the support. I know that we'll probably need room for questions for a lot of people. So I decided to choose a couple of short, but very happy, what I think are very happy poems. And over the course of this past year on 2020, which was pretty much terrible for everyone, I decided to sit back and look at a few things that I was grateful for that I basically just mock in daily life. This first poem is called Did. Kinked, curled, cut or straight. In this chair, I just wait, wait, wait. Make it like the sky or bright as the sun. Touch it to iron fire or put it in the bun. Inspects left and right. I prefer to wash it out. All of my pennies gone to a billion dollar industry, no doubt. And my next short poem is inspired by my wonderful family. It's called Hang the Moon. Build my first bike and arrange the scope. Set the site. Hang the moon. Throw it in the pot. Our little secret that Rue was always the best of the lot. Hang the moon. Stir and mix and salt and sweet. Teach me to fold that fitted sheet. Hang the moon. Color me numbers. Show me words. Let me breathe wise, bison, blurbs. Hang the moon. Tell me I can be anything I seek. The life you gave me. Never meek. Hang the moon. So that's it. Thank you, Angie. Thanks, everybody. Next up, activist, journalist, and a man who has always been a poet, Fred Dotsworth. These are all new poems written in the last couple of days, including one written today. I didn't know George Floyd. I might not have liked him, but his death broke my heart. All crying. These are called mono stitches. They're just one sentence. Sandra Bland, driving through Texas, failure to signal was all it took to end Sandra Bland's life. Should I mention it was night, she was black. This is something I wrote today. It's called the story of George and Eric. One wanted to buy some cigs. The other wanted to sell some. Both men had been targeted over and over and over again. For piss and infractions. It ended with their deaths. Every time you see me, you want to harass me, he said. He had a black face and thought he did a crime, my mom says, when they shot her son in the back twice. George and Eric didn't die from obesity or compromised health conditions. Black men die and black women die from racism systemic police violence. We all die a bit from a culture that criminalizes living while black, a culture criminalizing trying to survive to raise a family. Everything stacked against you. I can't breathe. I can't breathe. I can't breathe. I can't breathe. I can't breathe. I can't breathe. I can't breathe. I can't breathe. I can't breathe. I can't breathe. I can't breathe. I can't breathe. I can't breathe. I can't breathe. I can't breathe. I can't breathe. I can't breathe. I can't breathe. I can't breathe. I can't breathe. I can't breathe. I can't breathe. I can't breathe. I can't breathe. I can't breathe. I can't breathe. I can't breathe. I can't breathe. I can't breathe. I can't breathe. I can't breathe. I can't breathe. I can't breathe. I can't breathe. I can't breathe. I can't breathe. I can't breathe. I can't breathe. I can't breathe. I can't breathe. I can't breathe. I can't breathe. I can't breathe. I can't breathe. I can't Witnesses are stopped from saving a murdered man's life as it fades away right before our eyes over and over and over again. Meantime, 16-year-old Makaya Byron gets gunned down in an instant for waving a knife. Meantime, 13-year-old Adam Toledo is given less than a second before an officer fires his gun, kills him, the boy's hands in the air, the gun that wasn't his lying there on the ground. Meantime, Tamar Rice, 12-year-young, waves a toy pistol at a playground, gets shot before the patrol car stops. So don't tell me what happened. I already know it was a lynching and you and I are responsible for we allowed this to happen. Every time a black man or woman dies at the hands of institutional violence, codified, justified, and rationalized in the land of the free home of the brave. And my last poem is a haiku. In these dark waters, it's easy for hope to die. We can't let hate win. Whoa. Power. Thank you Fred. Now we have a writer of poetry, prose, scripts, and a poetic web developer, Kevin Dublin. Thank you, thank you. I'm gonna just read one poem, but it's a longer poem in progress, mural one. One. It's one thing to wake in the womb of 4 a.m. darkness and know who you are. It's another when light pollution leaks city through blinds, bends to flood and to dream over before your squinted eyes. All it takes is silence to recognize a poem. Freezer motor humming becomes memory of refrigerator door closing being told not to let your older cousin in the house. The living room carpet cover with a click of kitchen lock turning on. Don't let them look around for anything valuable with. At least don't drink anything after them. Sometimes it's love when reality shapes our expectations. Sometimes it's despair. Like our square park plan with a wave-like geometric place structure in an old neighborhood is sometimes a triumphant. Sometimes gentrification and sometimes both. All depending on who you are. Two. All it takes is silence to recognize. Outside is the hatching of morning where light is still an airy thing that purrs out past fog onto Embarcadero holding off the San Francisco Bay. Hear the pitch of laughter in a bird chirp and remember a 6 a.m. between San Diego between conga slaps, a marble night between smokes. The stroke of beard on a runner at Brandon Station becomes the beard unkempt above a conga rim. The same curls, the same slight twist with motion, the same relaxed skin under song. Other gray patch after exhales between drags is the same gray that hangs above water, just like clouds stirred on the horizon before island rain. The last time you saw it was romantic. Behind a dying firefly slipping on a tall blade of grass while pulsing, pulsing off its last light like a prayer. Three. Like a reminder, this is the first year a high school girlfriend has been dead longer than she was alive. Present like gray San Francisco skyline, the top of Salesforce Tower light like religion. It's human to not remember her embrace. It's human and it hurts the same way a lazy razor can remind you to pay attention in silence when you go to trim your face. The memory of all our touch will one day be replaced when skyscrapers are ancient and empty pupil on the side of a pine tree, shadows of two birds searching for prey, winds sooth the wet wings of an emerged monarch shaking loose and dry. What else do you find in the eye of a hunter? And tonight straighten like a mother's hand settling her skirt before she sits. This butterfly ends half in the mouth of an orial in flight and a world full of husks, truth must be simple. I've never known a God who built their own temple. Four. All it takes to recognize an entire ocean to take Japanese blood moon drip to Honolulu beach to take months to take handmade ships, take waves. Waves take a large red light bulb with here are gonna script to Tacoma Washington shore somewhere there is wisdom about what we leave in the water. We are of the water and like waves may wave for a moment but soon will be water again. Just like the rain puddle slowly giving itself up to the sky from this corner across seventh and Brandon and an encampment a woman whispers who taught you about faith. A challenge behind a tent fly sheet devoted to soma wind. I know it is near the end of perfect place to install a hand wash station, a porta potty. Then imagine it brown like an apple core at the base of a bush in Franklin square park before the week has worked on it. The murmur of worms, the shuffling skitter of cockroach feet towards friends. Eventually the feeding days ants stumbling from its remains. The sun drive seed sealing away in a morning does beak. All it takes the moonlight, the moonlit stem a tiny casket handle erupts from the earth. Fine I came from the earth like radical seedlings work to claim March sun and say, this is my light from the skateboard wheels over sidewalk cracks of Wilmington nights head bobbing between headlights and behind shrubs from love lolly pines along the highway from the taste of smoke from a backyard barbecue from train whistles young rumble shaking June bedroom between evening cicada songs and a radio tune to foxy 107 104 like gray fox fox squirrel flying squirrel white tail dear tail that call this land home from a father who would answer how you're doing with kicking but not too high from trying to find the difference between to heal and to cure from a year of pandemic growth untwisted to locks fit together 10 years which begin with Miss Angie Oakland's finance lot Titian and in and hands that first braided in Senegal from the Russell of a dollar from a soup pocket into a collection play as you brought me from a mighty long way escapes the mouth of choir from look to your neighbor and say neighbor. I said, I want you to say neighbor. He brought me from a mighty long way from Mars dust tone gleam of a street drummer skin and the sun from pattern and a mother's skirt as he leads her toddler and African dance from sun somewhere behind Bay Bridge expanse and fog from the long end of a three extending beyond 60 seconds at the end of a digital clock when the police pull you over from an officer's hand over holster as a murder of crows scatter from went post like a dark dandelion pressures pressured by exhale and summer wish. All I ask is if he kills me, please, let there be a stranger who records him. Maybe it will be enough to go viral. Send it all to trial at least. Maybe he'll kill me and they'll judge him guilty. Maybe he'll kill me and someone will call a sentencing justice. Thank you. I felt all of that Kevin. Thank you. Here comes New York Times bestselling author and multiple award-winning poet. My friend, Mary Mackey. Hi everybody, welcome. I'm going to take you on a trip tonight since none of us have been traveling anywhere. At least I don't know about the rest of you but I have been dusting my car more than I've been driving it. So I'm gonna take you to the rainforest of Brazil because I am very, I lived in the rainforest of Central America and South America from over a period of about six years. And it's incredibly beautiful. And it's one of those great works of natural art that needs to be preserved forever and ever. And so I'm going to read you. What I'm doing in my poetry really is trying to preserve the vision for future generations of the beauty of what I'm beginning to call the old planet and also sort of talk about the situation. The first poem I'm going to read is called The Invisible Force of Amapá and it's the least burned over cut part of the Amazon. It's in Brazil and all the animals at the beginning still exist there but they're endangered everywhere else. And so it's not, of course, invisible to the indigenous people who live there but it's not been mapped by anything but they can't map it by satellite because of the trees and the clouds. That's the part of the rainforest. Invisible force of Amapá. Crested, Capuchin, Nectarbat, three-toed sloth, golden lion tamarin, red-handed howling monkey, dark-throated seed eater, blue-winged macaw, great rivers veiled in steam, 60 billion trees reaching toward a sky so green it burns like copper. This next poem is from the title of my collection, The Jaguars that Proll our Dreams. It's the title poem and it has a little Portuguese in it but please don't panic because the Portuguese is translated immediately after it's said and also it just sort of acts as a, if you don't, you know, if you understand Spanish or any romance language you'll kind of get a little extra but it becomes a kind of chant otherwise. The first words in this poem are the tributaries of the Amazon, the Great Amazon River and the last words are the tribes that have been eliminated through genocide and disease after the European conquest. So this is called The Jaguars that Proll our Dreams. Up on the Oranoku, Hionegro, Solimoes, Tocanxing, Xingu, Javare, they're drinking the Bebida Preta black drink snake vine, ayahuasca, Yage, blood of the great Anaconda with the smoke of burning rainforests in their nostrils and a gustu de cenizas, taste of ashes on their tongues. El es esta comendo, they're eating purple snails, powdered viper venom, largatas es magadas, flowers that dry their lips, the color of blood, singing of cities of blue glass and the jaguars that Proll our Dreams. Who came mice, what else are they seeing? Who came mice, what else do they know? They're not saying, they're not telling, they're calling on the ghost tribes instead, ghosts of the Tupanimba, Tupan king, Amare, lost up forever, lost in the burning world. And then I'm gonna read you one more poem. And this is a poem, we were just talking earlier about the joy of Zoom, bringing people together from all over the world and being able to see one another with no barriers. It's one of the good things about Zoom. And this is sort of a poem about universal energy and the joy of that universal energy. And it's called Samba. Samba, Samba. It's always been Samba. The ferns in the window Samba toward the light, the squash blossoms in the garden Samba open and the cucumber vine Samba up the wall. In the high grass, the crickets are singing Samba and the quail are in a circle, stamping their feet. The cabbage moths Samba and the yellowjacket Samba and even the snail Samba very, very slowly. And in the orc cloud, hail bop is doing the Samba twitching her long argon skirts. At the edge of the universe, at this very moment, billions of nameless galaxies are sambaing away from one another at the speed of light. Back on earth, people Samba to work and Samba home and their dogs and cats Samba out to greet them. Lovers Samba all night long in Samba happy beds and newborn babies dream of nothing but Samba. Even the dead Samba into the ground and Samba back out again, leaving empty spaces where the Samba goes on doing its own Samba forever. Thank you. Thank you, Mary. Always delightful, love it. Next up is poet, playwright, publisher and founder of Hayward B Street Writers. My fellow B Streeter, Leticia Garcia Bradford. You're on mute. Thank you, Cheryl. It's a great pleasure to be here tonight. I've got several poems for you. The first one is, St. Michael in the Garden Room. I can't remember me swinging. Is mama pushing me finally on my own afraid to swing too high? In junior high stealing the seat from the kid with a heart of disillusionment. St. Michael in the Garden. I can't remember the thorn in my side like a pebble in my shoe. Why is it there? A rose has thorned even so it is beautiful. St. Paul has a thorn questioning the same as mine. He endures the pain. I cannot. St. Michael in the Garden. I can't remember my first love. That first kiss. Was it filled with love or infatuation? That kiss led to sex. That led to a baby crying for love. Then throw the baby out with the bathwater. St. Michael in the Garden. Gardening in front of my ill driven cart. I strive for peace, for comfort, for strength. The sorrow that encapsulates me needs a deeper root. Needs the great sunshine. Needs the water of life. My yoke is easy. My burden is light. St. Michael speaks to me. Thank you. The second poem I have for you tonight was kind of inspired by AWP from 2019. No, 2018. And I went to a workshop and this poem is called Out of Grass. I try hard to overcome hurdles, fast approaching, yet in every sense of the word, I feel like a failure, getting closer to the prize before it slips away by that lottery ticket full of hope, fingers crossed, pinching pennies to pay the rent, swinging high, but not high enough to release all my troubles. Running to catch the bus, watching it go by the bus stop, a mirror 500 meters away, grasping a beautiful rose, pricking my fingers, luscious plump berries, hiding behind a cable thorns, extending my hand toward right fruit on the tree, avocado, apricots, pomegranates, the card breaking down before my next paycheck, speed reading the library book, finishing after due date. Our late fees, a sin, needing more drugs to stave off depression. I feel like I'm running behind the pack. I wake up each day to start anew. I put a smile on my face to fake it. All my insecurities and lows put into a bottomless pot, shoved up high on the shelf, yet still within reach. Why can't my uncertainties be out of grasp? Does the imposter syndrome ever find a cure? And I could keep reading poetry the rest of them. But I'll finish up with this one. It seems of late my grandsons have been my muse. And this particular one, those are photographs I got of my year and a half old grandson finding his shadow for the first time. This is called my fleeting shadow. Fine above the morning dawn, I'm looking for my shadow. Not yet do I perceive what often eludes me. I'm searching for the sky amongst the clouds up above. I look for dandelions to blow sweet seeds across the horizon. Is it green or is it cold? Is it red, real or is it memory? You can't compare. Must be an echo. Worship, worship, worship. The wheels are turning on a dry ocean. The drakes of sand fill my casket. I feel like a fish on land. Take me home to Atlantis and back again. What's real? What's not real? I cannot find it. I'm still looking for my shadow. Below the deep come with me and fly upon the sea. I've been there before. Worship, worship, worship. Holding grandma's frivilled hand, fingernails perfect. That's all I have left of her. Holding baby's tiny finger, tiny hand, holding fast my pinky. Grip with the memory. It may never be there again. Worship, worship, worship. The Bradford stained glass window in the town of York in Great Britain. My sanctuary shattered in the war. Poppers pulled their pennies together to rebuild the cathedral window. Is it real? Is it replaced? Is it refurbished? Yes, the sun shines through again as does my shadow. Worship, worship, worship. The sky is green. The glass is blue. My memory fulfills despite my fleeting shadow. Thank you. Wow. Thank you, Leticia. Wonderful. Thank you. Now get ready for the sublimely creative mother, dancer, singer, writer, and poet. Isis, Blanchet, Marc Sully. Good evening. Good evening, everybody. I'm super excited to be with you all, everybody that has signed in. It's wonderful. I'm going to just jump right on in. I have three pieces that I'd like to share tonight. And this first one is called Bullet Shinkansen, which is the Japanese bullet train. Now boarding. I'm not getting on that thing, Super Sonic Spring Fling. I heard it causes motion sickness in the morning. I heard it drops you off in the wrong part of town. Sparing me a ticket does not make me frown. I said, I'm not getting in that trap. The door is shut behind me like a fact. What if I never get back? Who else is in the cabin? What concoctions of drinks do they be having? The engines are loud. I can't hear a thing, not even my own inner voice as it whispers and sings. The horn keeps blaring, a stentorian sound. Have we even started moving? Are we still on the ground? So many voices yet no other passengers around. The dining car's bar is fully stocked and loaded. An endless flow of the perfect cocktails to get me bloated. Berries with the chocolate coating. Who else is here? My one frustration is how did I even get to the station? Departing. Let's check out the head car. The conductor must be near. What? There's no one here. Come to notice, I'm all alone. Except you. They're in the rear. Where are we going? What shall we do? And if no one's driving this thing, are we through? All right. So this next one is called Iceberg. 868 and it's a really famous iceberg that it's just melted away. Iceberg. Only the tip. Sometimes when the sun is hot enough, I drip. But though I never, I'm much too clever. See, most of me is beneath the sea, cloaked, executioner of boats. Don't float. Don't mistake me for land. No, it's frozen quicksand. Paralytic, virginity, Poseidon can't get rid of me. Shiver me timbers. Brisk, crisp and quivers. Embossed in scabrous shards. Primitive wounds bleed tar. Alone amongst the vastness. The mind wanders the fastest. The silent flickers above. No arms to hug. Deep and thick. Impenetrable and slick. Faithful to fusion with the floor. Down further evermore. Mammoth breath and an abysmal depth. Where light ends and darkness bends. The interplaners permeate the channels with the gates that usually stay locked. See, permafrosts usually a solid block. But the detonation of fire ice, primordial density gutted, sliced. Geysers spewing diamonds, smelting into glitter dust. Disclosure of my hidden trust. Gushing into the void, the blue. Molten, sleeted magma. My form, new. Compressing so until you wouldn't let go. All right. This last one is called wet boots. My Ted Day. I hate soggy socks, especially when I know it's gutter water. We trod along the slippery sidewalk. The umbrella barely covers the both of us. Watch out for puddles. Don't want to get your socks muddy. I ache. My baby doesn't have galoshes. Just his regular tennis. I got wet boots. I thought they'd protect me in the rain. Turns out they have holes. With every step I squish and squash in the sloppy feel. Toes cold and wrinkled. As long as my baby doesn't know I'm good. I get him to class dry enough. He won't be the only damp child in class. And I just hope the kindergarten carpets don't mildew. Hmm. I'm sure there's something else I could be thinking about. What do I do while he's away for three and a half hours? That's just enough time for me to... I carry myself back up 6th Street. And mother calls to me. Sometimes I listen. Other times I don't. Today though, I figure, well, my boots are already soaked. My little piggy's pruny. I might as well go talk to her. The gates to the courtyard seem to always be open. Angels cry onto the flowers placed delicately amongst mother. She's holding her baby god. Umbrella collapses from my hand, blows away a few feet. And as usual, I kneel before her and I bless her and the child and their everlasting love, grace and mercy. Before I continue pouring like the sky above, she silences us. Listen, she says something to me. Before long, I open my eyes and I wash my face. I hope I don't forget what mother said, although honestly, I hope I was quiet enough to hear her. I start thinking of all the ways I'm going to dry my feet. Maybe I'll prop them in front of the heater. Maybe I'll put on another pair of socks. Should I throw these boots away? I mean, they're still fine when it's not raining. Ooh, I wish I had a blow dryer. They'd be toasty in seconds. I make it back home and take off my wet boots. My socks and feet are dry. Thank you all. Marvelous debut, Isis. Thank you. Well, there's one more poet left. Let's see. Who is it? Oh, it's me. No poetry. No peace. It can saunter serenely press its form against any door of any room. Enter on a vapor trace hijacking my senses, taking over my everything. Yet much of the time, it knocks hard on my wall of sleep interrupted, slapping my rim into wide-eyed recognition that another one has arrived, compelling me to rise to speak it before it's gone. Write it before it is erased, but I turn my pillow to the cool side and seek slumber's return, leaving open the door to a morning of regret, a day of clumsy attempts to reach back and get the right words in the right order, in the right rhythm. So many times I foolishly let it sleep away, dreaming myself good enough to retrieve it all intact in my chaotic wakefulness with original meaning, thinking I would repossess it easily. With my anointed poetic compass, even as it warned and whisper, there will be war within and conflict unresolved. I will scatter you if you do not find me. No poetry. No peace. I awake and still believe the prose of the dream is tucked away and easy to wave returned by the magic wand of the bard, but that is the lie of the fantasy. As sunrise scorches recall, I mourn another disappearance to the toss and the turn, to the burning wet skin, to this false strength of memory, this confidence of divine recollection, this fear that if I rise, I will have to explain why I'm up at this hour and I will have to reveal a poem is here. I must let it in. No poetry. No peace. It doesn't give up on me an unrelenting surprise. I do believe it loves me. Another has arrived compelling me to rise, to speak it before it's gone, to write it before it is erased. No poetry. No peace. Now I am loud with it. I know the consequences of an abuse of power. It will all be said whether you ever hear it or not. I am a soldier in this war, a self-appointed prose protector from those who live without the reason and the rhyme and can be prone to evil. No poetry. No peace. I did not know it would make me feel this way. So I do not hesitate on those nights more frequent now. I am duty bound to trap it and assure its capture so I can set it free. I write in the dark. On paper, I can only feel with my hands purposely spacing the lines much too far apart so there are no misunderstandings. While the armor of urgency shields each movement and the words fall out with the hope that clarity is still present in the next. And somehow I know all will be well. I have kept the night safe. There will be another morning. I have once again completed my ordered contribution against the tide of damage caused by the missing poem in the no verse madlands where punishment is swift when words are not used as intended. Leaving space for alternatives that lack compassion and grace and diminish the woman who ignores the message of her muse. No poetry. No peace. Thank you all for being here. Thank you, poets. Thank you, Taryn. Thank you, Mechanics Institute. It's been a pleasure. You're very welcome and thank you all for the stunning work. Does anyone have any questions? If you have questions, please put them in the chat space and I'll read them out aloud. All right, what they seem to want to know is where to buy the books. So I put the link to the events tonight's website, tonight's events website, and there you'll find the readers bios that they provided to me. Some of their bios have links directly to the poet's private websites where you can buy materials from them. I also encourage you to reach out to your local bookstore and ask them to order the book that you are interested in. But it sounds as if a lot of these poems were new. Is that true, readers, poets? Well, mine are in my book, No Poetry, No Peace, and it's available, Goodreads, Amazon. Just go to www.SherylJBizay-Bootay.com and you'll find the links. Yeah, mine aren't new. Mine are in my collection, The Jaguars that Prowler Dreams, and this can be found. I would like you to buy it from your local bookstore. They can order it. It should be easily ordered from Marsh Hawks Press, but you can also, small press distribution actually is where you should go to. But they also can be found on Amazon and all my books actually can be. So if you're somewhere out in the country where you have no local bookstore, that's a good alternative, but it's always great to support your local bookstores. It's really important for all of us and for the culture of poetry itself. Here, here. For me, most of my poems are on my blog, and if you Google my name, Latisha Garcia Bradford, it will pop up all kinds of things, and you should be able to get to, I have two blogs, lbradford.blogspot.com, I think. I haven't looked at it in so long, but I also have another blog, too, of some of my stories. So my shadow poem, I just wrote with a broken arm. How do you write with a broken arm? So it's not anywhere yet. Thank you. That sounds like a poem, Latisha. How do you write with a broken arm? It's the one process, but I figured it out. Good. Okay. So I was able to get Latisha and Cheryl's websites in the chat space. Kevin also has a website. There we go. I spend most of my time actually making books for other poets, and so I'm going to put in the chat the mom's for housing book that just came out, my colossus breast that I put together, which Cheryl's got work in. And it's a beautiful, one of the most beautiful books I have ever seen. And I just finished working with Carla Bundridge to put together Dante Clark's Closed Cappens, which is a fantastic book by the former poet laureate of Richmond about Richmond life. And it's so good. The colossus breast one for mom's for housing, all the money, every cent of it. Goes to the mom's for housing. So they bought the houses in Oakland that were being taken off the market. So that's one of these days I'll get one of my own books out. But right now I'm working on four or five other books for other people. And if any of the poets here today, y'all know who to talk to. Yeah, here's the mom's for housing. The colossus press home goes so they can buy another house every cent. Fred has some beautiful work in here. Thank you, Isis or Angela. Do you have any web links that you want me to put in the chat at this time? I tend to mooch off my mom a bit so we can go to her website first. I'm a scientist, so I spend most of my time doing that. But yeah, you can find my stuff on my mom's website for now. Okay, great. All right. Well, let's see. Thank you very much, everyone. I don't see any questions here. Oh, there's Isis's website in the chat. And those of you who are attending, when I have the video ready, I'll also include these links again in the email that I send you. So don't stress out about making sure that you copy these because I'll send them to you in a day or two. All right. Thank you, poets. You made one more thing, Taryn. Yes. If you all, if everyone liked what they heard tonight and they want to hear it again, contact Taryn. Contact Taryn. Not again, but if you want to hear more, let Taryn know. Yes, absolutely. If you are a poet or if you're a writer of some kind and you have some other writer friends and you want to have a reading of some kind like this, let me know and we'll see what we can figure out together. And I will put my chat, not my chat, but my email address in the chat space as well. So you have it. All right. Kevin, were you a curator that just put together the Quiet Lightning reading, which will be on May 3rd? So if you want to hear more about what Kevin helped birth, check out QuietLightning.com. May 3rd, there will be a reading. Right on. Good, good, good. Good to know. Thank you again, Taryn. Thank you, poets. I think Kevin wants to say something, I think. Oh, yeah. I was just going to say thank you. One, you know, for mentioning that, two, Cheryl, everyone, all the readers, fantastic. Taryn, you know, amazing. He's always putting this all together. But yeah, no, thank you, everyone also for coming. Cheryl, thank you so much, Taryn. Thank you so much. All the readers, thank you so much. You guys rock my world. No poetry. Thank you, Taryn. Thank you, Cheryl. This has been a great pleasure and nice to meet some new poets. And I'd like to hear more from all of you in the future. Thank you. Have a nice evening. Good night.