 All right. We are just past the hour of six o'clock, the start time for our event tonight. No poetry, no peace, which is a reading of local poetry and a celebration of human expression and peace. This event was set to be held today in order to help celebrate Poetry Month, National Poetry Month, which is April. So my name is Taryn Edwards. I am one of the librarians here at the Mechanics Institute of San Francisco. I hope you can see our beautiful library. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Mechanics Institute, we are not just a place for those who wield a wrench, but anyone who feels like making or doing or reading or writing things. We are an independent membership organization that houses a beautiful library. You can see it right behind me. We are the oldest designed to serve the general public in California. We are also a cultural event center and a world renowned chess club. That is the oldest in the nation. We were founded in 1854. And I hope so far, your interest is peaked. I would consider becoming a member with us. It is only $120 a year. And with that you help support our contribution to the literary and cultural world of the San Francisco Bay Area. So I have a co-host tonight. She is the co-author of the collection of poems after which this event is named, No Poetry, No Peace, which she produced with her daughter. Dr. Angela Boutet. And Cheryl has selected the poets who will be reading tonight. And she also is the author of the novel Betrayal on the Bayou. And you will find all of her published work at the Mechanics Institute's library. Cheryl is invaluable not only to me, but to the community at large of Mechanics Institute. She helps me with our monthly writers event, the writers lunch, and also host fun times like this one. So thank you so much Cheryl as always for volunteering your help, helping me and all of us keep our community, not only writing but reading the good stuff. I appreciate you so much. You're not tearing you're going to make me weep. Thank you so much. Well I got inspired you know I had to keep talking because my dogs actually burst through the door. Right when I was talking anyway, before you take over officially I just want to tell our guests. Thank you so much for coming tonight. We are using the webinar version of zoom, which means it's completely normal for you to not see yourself. Only our poets will be visible tonight. I also wanted to encourage you to use the chat space to comment or congratulate our poets. I will be posting the links to their individual websites there and also engaging with you throughout the event. Cheryl, I think maybe we're ready to enjoy some poetry. What do you think. All right, sounds like a plan. Thank you so much Darren, and thanks to the Mechanics Institute for having us again with these wonderful poets we have tonight and thank you. All of the people in the audience who have joined us tonight. I just wanted to remind people that this is National Poetry Month, and that is one of the main reasons that we're here. And this evening we gather with a group of gifted and wonderful poets under the banner of no poetry, no peace. And I'd like to open this this bountiful reading with a couple of quotes. Poetry is an echo. Asking a shadow to dance. Carl Sandberg. And another poetry is language and it's most distilled and most powerful. And that was Rita Dove. And tonight you're going to hear beautiful beautiful things that these poets have created out of their imaginations and experiences that I know you will remember long after this night of poetry has ended. I would first like to introduce our first poet, Carla Brundage. Carla is the author of two books of poetry, including swallowing water melons and co author of Malata, not so tragic. Her work as editor and publisher for Pacific Raven Press has included anthology authors in the Bay Area, Hawaii, Ghana, Nigeria, and Kenya. A graduate of Vassar College Mills College MFA program hey my mill sister. I'm going to be a golden girl this year by the way. And San Francisco State clinical schools project Carla is host of ugly beauty poetry series and founder of West Oakland to West Africa poetry exchange, and I also want to just add right quick. I was honored to be one of the contributors to the Colossus Press home anthology that Carla did along with her partner Sarah bill. Ladies and gentlemen, Carla Brundage. Thank you Cheryl. I'm going to dedicate the whole reading that I do tonight for poems to Justin Pearson and Justin Jones of Tennessee. What we witnessed the bravery of these two people standing up and putting everything on the line was magnificent so I'll just get started. The revolution will be televised with apologies to Gil Scott Herron. The revolution will be televised. Can't you see it's happening right now. Phase one, destroy the warriors define warriors, however you want. Phase two, cut out our tongues, change the language, redefine words to have new meanings, liberal entitlement news, Trump connect stream footprint cloud. Phase three, take our religion, give us icons and devices to worship, bow your head and text, bow your head and text, replace prayer with for take our land, displace the people. Phase five, destroy the family unit, undo the matriarchy, let women come together for no against no for no against the safety of our children born and unborn our bodies sacred and trampled the harmonized love. Phase six shock and awe replay violent deaths over and over for analysis. Was he really choking. Could he really breathe. Was she really carrying a phone was there skirt to short. Did they ask for it. Was his 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. I'm right. Ask the extreme left. Who's left. The revolution will be televised. Turn off all the lights. Keep them on. Turn them off. No, keep them on. Are we running out of water. Are we running out of time. Are we running. Make sure you have a gun. Make sure you have a gun. Lock your doors. Lock them tight. The revolution will be televised tonight. Why do black people protest. Black people have always fought for this country fought for fought this country fought for this country fought one alongside whites occupying spaces of shadow. My grandfather's hat and gun. Crossbow spurs. Twinkle in his matted eye hair like a buffalo soldiers. In the bedroom to is silence. The stop, the choking gall to aspire towards light. Of course, a synthetic illusion of freedom. Hold my blistered hand love. Open the door. There's a baked ham on the front table. But to sacrifice my happiness to hatred. What for. Am I obligated to to pay price paid so many times over. Arms weary from carrying the signpost. Pinched nerves in the back of spine. I am a woman. This is a new poem I just wrote it. Yet untitled but it's about my students. I'm going to call it ghosts for now. My classroom is an intimate place. Apathy filled backpacks. Faces hidden under black hoods. Masked sorrow. A hand may raise a question posed. A comment dropped. Little L comes into the room. His bravado bearing back breaking anger. He cannot allow life and limber, he cannot allow his body to rest in a chair. Up and down each minute. He paces the classroom offering a lab. A curse. A shocking moment of brilliance. Of course he can quote sojourner truth. But why should he when his identity no longer exists. He could be an illusion. He knows black men, including his father, tossed up like clay birds for target practice. The ghosts of bullets bouncing off their backs. Manhood can make dangerous thoughts. A journey in a classroom where what is reaffirmed is his invisibility. It always comes naturally. It always has. He knows that to be a victim is to not seek revenge. For a moment he sits, writes out a few lines of a poem. Crumples it up. Tosses it across the room. Daring someone. Anyone to read it. Our eyes lock. Pick it up. The answer is a slow deliberate lean. A taking back. There's a shrug. Then a hoodie raised. Tension in the room condenses windows frost. All the other students suddenly are quiet. Focused on their writing. I turn my back. The ultimate sign of trust. And continue to write on the board. He stands. And with all of his young man's voice. Asserts. I need. To use the bathroom. Sure, I say. Not turning around. And when I do. He. And his crumpled paper. Are gone. So my final piece. Coming back to Justin Jones. I have a question for you. I have a question for you. I actually wrote this when I was imagining. A Kamala Harris. Who I believe is going to get. A lot no matter what she does. Good or bad. But anyway, I wrote this imagining a black woman in the white house. So before it actually happened. And it's dedicated to Huey Newton. Bobby seals. The author of the 10 point plan. One. The brutal killing of black children must stop. Two. Children are not meant to be hungry. Give us lunch and freedom. Three schools that teach self-determination and community. For employment is a right. Not jails. Close them and stop police. Five. Six. We need bread education. Just peace. Control of new seven. Technology should make health care completely free. To we eight. Demand prison reform. To so-called crimes under unjust laws. Nine. To carry arms to protect ourselves and power to determine. 10. Our destiny is not robbery by capitalists. But unity. And that's our destiny. Thank you. Wow, Carla. I think you should package up that 10 point plan and send it to Vice President Harris. I think she would. Get some use out of it. Wonderful, wonderful poetry. Thank you so, so much for being here with us tonight. And sharing all of those wonderful things. Next, I'd like to introduce Sandra. Sandra is a great explorer and she has a long life. And in San Francisco. Sandra has lived most of her life in Alaska. Involved in dogmashing as a kid. Mountain running as an adult. Raising her two sons and having a long career. An adult in vocational education. She served as managing and poetry editor. Of 14 Hills and co-founded the Bay Area, generations. Sandra and that wonderful unique way of presenting all kinds of literary art with intergenerational partners. And she posted this multi-generational reading series continuously for seven years from 2013 to 2020. Her first book, The Dream That Is Childhood, a memoir in first about growing up in the territory of Alaska during the 1950s, was recently published by Cirque Press. Please welcome Sandra Wasil. I am now live. Thank you very much. Thank you both Cheryl and Terence for organizing such an important reading event and the Mechanics Institute for providing the venue. It's wonderful. I'm going to read you three poems. Two does come out of the book about my childhood. The first poem will be Diamond Willow, which focuses and gives you a little flavor of the community, which was very tiny, no more than 20, 25 people at a stretch where we lived in the wilderness. Two notes, Diamond Willow is a common willow with a virus. It affects the heartwood and creates diamond-shaped recesses that produce a beautiful pattern in the wood and is used by craftspeople to make furniture and beautiful things. Outside to an Alaskan used to mean the United States, and it has come to mean the rest of the United States, Diamond Willow. It hid with its sores under black, under bark, rough with lichens, solitary and afflicted among the common willow. Those gray whips crowding the banks of slews and creeks that emptied into the lake ready to lash my face if I ran by too close, too fast on snow-fixed trails. Distant were the first people I knew, the men who lived around the lake, far from cities, factories, wars, far from each other, mean men, spare of word and cash, until mail day, once a week at the post office, front porch of our house, dog teams or boats tied up at the shore the day given over to waiting, waiting for the mail plane, losing hours and hundred mile hops, pots of coffee and rounds of story, perched steady in the kitchen, sweaty with cigarette smoke, whips of urine off the fur of homemade parkas and of fish off the gurry wiped on pants. They waited for just since weekly an order from Sears, maybe a check from Sam Applebaum, the fur buyer, a case of Paps Blue Ribbon Time Magazine, contact with the outside in packets and parcels. In a dream that is childhood, I weaved through willows and adults unaware of a rot that broke off their branches and ate into the red heartwood rhomboids, scars that hardened the tree, unaware I too would become infected and mourn for the bitter taste of willow and winter at the lake when the cold grew so dark heaven swallowed the earth and the stars, burned out recesses, scattering light that felt like serenity. The second poem in this book is Dear Anastasia, a letter to my foster sister whom I never met, but whose life configured mine in important ways. Certainly, I give a lot of thought to how war affects children. Dear Anastasia, epigraph, a memory of the foster parents' plan for war children. My foster sister in Greece, I want you to know my mother shared your photo and notes with me and I thought of how you came to be orphaned, having an inkling even at the tender age of five that the world war killed parents and children suffered. Now I wonder how much my parents choosing to foster you stemmed from the loss of their son to an institution such a gesture instinctive to mending their personal wound, knowing their funds to sponsor you helped mitigate such pain and separation that parent and child feel whether temporary or wherever. I don't know if you were an orphan at all or made destitute by whatever happened in Greece during the war, but I have learned it was the communist to help the Americans gather the intelligence that ended the war in Europe, the Greek government having been compliant with the Nazis. Whatever happened there, the country and people paid a price. Whatever happened to you, I consider from time to time. I thought once you might be adopted, I heard those words spoken by my parents. You would come to live with us and we would be sisters who played with one another, but you never climbed down the steps of the airplanes landing weekly at our tiny airstrip. And my parents had other babies. The youngest, the sister I felt had been promised to me. You know, Anastasia, maybe you were considered before my brother had to leave us. Perhaps the impulse may have been pure as pure as any human impulse can be. And the failure to adopt you gave us the toughness to weather our loss. Knowing you existed, spurred on my love of Greek myth. And I imagined we were sisters in distant time, a personal myth I remember whenever I pass as Greek. And now coming to the present, to my Yupik Eskimo family, into which I married and my children. This poem has three words of note. Ewa is the Yupik word for the sun as the eye of God. And Sedna is a very feisty goddess or female force of the ocean. And Raven, well, Raven is kind of a presence of normalcy with a kind of nagging that says get to the business at hand already. This is called affliction. And it is published in Essential Truths and Anthology, Essential Truths, The Bay Area in Color. And I know Carla has some work in there too. And it was edited by Shishwe Siegel here in the Bay Area. Affliction. My two sons afflicted their bones, their schemata, compromised, blood undermining the body, one at the joints, lava gathering under the surface before it explodes as volcano fire let loose upon the land. The other, a fusion of vertebrae energy choked into a narrow stream within distorting posture. Radiation like the past buries a time capsule. Broken my bones liquefy as rock turning molten and implode into the blood but my day sets. My children writhe in the unrelenting glare of Ewa burning up the pestilence that spawns affliction. Where are you Raven? Or is it Sedna wanting the bones of all people to wash back into her realm, the ocean filled with tears for what they have done to the earth, the thunder the tree that lifts itself to sky to find rain? Oh my mother where is Raven? Have his wings tired in trying to find land where no sickness lives? Where we can heal in the freshening breeze and seed and action verb for kindness in soil so soft we can lie down on your bosom and hear your heartbeat where we can stand up tall on strong bones and reach for the sky. Thank you. Absolutely beautiful. Thank you Sandra. Moving and I learned a lot about Alaska and how you feel about it. Just wonderful. Thank you so much. Thank you. Our next poet is Terry Tierney. He's the author of a poetry collection The Poets Garage which I just love that title and the novel's Lucky Ride and The Bridge on Beer River published by Unsolicited Press. His stories and poems have appeared in over 70 literary journals. Talk about a prolific writer and poet including Ghost Parachute, Fictive Dreams, Rust Plus Moth, Typishly, Valo Paricio, Poetry Review, The Lake Third Wednesday, Port of Del Sol, and Poetry Northwest. Everyone please welcome Terry Tierney. Sorry I had to unmute. Thank you Cheryl. And thanks to the Mechanics Institute and Taryn for putting this program together with Cheryl. And also want to thank Carla and Sandra. I really enjoyed listening to your poems. Thank you very much. So I'm going to start, since it's poetry month, I'm going to start with a poem that's about poetry from my book The Poets Garage that Cheryl mentioned. And this poem is based on a true story although there's quite a bit of poetic license involved in the telling. The Poets Garage. When the policeman come to arrest me for forgery, I hide out in the garage where I learned how to write. My manual laid out on the bench, words stacked around me like old tires, pools of black grease where lines have spilled, staining the sawdust. I watched the detective study the house, his junky nose running, he anticipates my arrest and waits for my wife to come home from the library. He reads her how I forge checks in three counties. The name is right, but the description fails. The forger stands taller, pounds heavier, a different Smith. My husband looks like a mechanic, she says, and he's much older. A blue-suited sergeant refuses to believe her, saying I am both smaller and larger, older and younger, a mechanic and a Smith. Look in the garage, she says, modifiers hanging on nails, the cardboard box of active verbs, the files of proper nouns, no signatures remain, the author gone, only the spaces where he worked. They gathered the spaces for evidence, but I escape with the narrative, some of it leaking on the way until my book breaks down in Pennsylvania. When my wife escapes and brings my tools, I begin to forge a new name, a new home, a new library. Thank you. This next poem recalls my childhood. It's called Blue Jay. Blue Jay lances down from red maple, swirl, darting in retreat, clutching phone line, ducking for cover. I sense the airborne threat, trying to pick cherries, a boy with courage, only for groundfall, the blue jays screech and swoop, protecting even rotten fruit. I fill the birdbath to distract him. His sharp beak and talons claim cherries and water, staining the basin red with skins and pits. My family moves to a new home, then another, each house white, a three bedroom ranch, where Blue Jay perches in the backyard tree, redwood, boxelder, catalpa, spruce, Blue Jay always the same. It was years before he found me here, my own ranch house, my cherry seedling. When he lights on my windowsill, I know what he will say. Every move disturbs his nest. There's only one house, one tree, one Blue Jay, the color of sky. Let's skip to some newer poems. This next poem is a love poem. However, I need to give you a warning if you don't like descriptions of human dissection, but just remember it's really just a metaphor. Psychotherapy after dinner. When she unzips her sweater, her lungs spill to the floor, still humming the soundtrack of our dinner conversation, our sticky choice of dessert, how we tasted the pollen in honey, the way she knitted the carnation on her pocket, a finer yarn tacking the blossom, like veins connecting her stomach as it slides out between the flaps of her jeans, then the long trails of intestines, slippery serpents smelling of souls, the salmon and wild rice, the wine. I worry about her gentle heart, whether it can take the pressure, the jarring fault of hardwood, but it purrs between her womb and her fertile lobes of brain. Her long legs and slender arms detach and curl around her organs and her ribs pull away like butterflies until only her spine stands hanging, an empty hanger bent straight with nothing left to stretch, collapsing beside her shoes. From her warm pile of blood and flesh, I feel her fingertips emerge, crawling up my ankles past my waist to my own peeling hand, helping me unbutton my shirt. So since the theme is no poetry, no peace, I thought it'd be good to read a couple of war poems, but this poem is really more local. These are the wars that are going on around us right now, and this is a very new poem. It's called Civic Center Station. On the platform, a man yells, God, God damn it, God, why won't you listen? God damn it, God. Two guards look behind me, eyes bored. One checks his cell phone. The loud speaker announces, the elevator is broken, use the stairs. God, why aren't you listening? God damn it, God. The voice comes around a column, moving faster than me. I feel isolated, losing sight of the guards. The gray jacket rushes past, eyes scanning the floor and back up, hair bobbing between pleas, arms bent at the elbow, hands to his head, and back down, as if shaking them dry. What can I say to him? But he's not looking at me. He moves toward the tracks, causes to stare down at bare dirt, cigarette butts, napkins. I'm talking to you, God. Listen to me, God. Turns and circles in front of the turnstiles, avoids a blanketed figure, clutching tinfoil, strides toward the gasping ozone. I reach the steps, the loud speaker drones, Antioch train arriving, platform two. God damn it, God. Listen to me, God. This next poem, I owe to my son when he was very small. It's a little bit more of an environmental poem. After that last one, it's called Why Trees Stay Outside. Why do trees stay outside? My son asks in the rear view mirror. His car seat centered behind me. He worries about the soaking rain, the trees getting wet. I could tell him the old fable, the night the redwoods came to dinner, or I could tell him the truth, how the trees are inside now. We live in their house, their roots clashed around us like praying hands. They watch, wondering why we neglect the pain of mowed grass, the desperation of dough and fawn sprinting for shelter, the cold stars peering through boughs of live oak, the promise of blooming moss. I might echo his teachers, say we are one with nature. The trees and rocks love us. They want to be left outside. The easy answer he expects. We climb a ridge as the rain clears, sifting soot from the air, across the bay, the Feralon Islands, punch through the fog like knuckles. I'd like to end with a short poem, another poem that talks about recovering from war. And my father was a veteran of World War II. And when I was sucked into the service, and before they were going to ship us overseas, they showed us these scratchy old black and white training films. And I realized they must have shown my father the exact same films, you know, before they shipped him over to Europe. This film was called What to Do in Case of a Gas Attack. My father dug a trench for his fear. By the time he returned, his blisters had healed and no access planes had bombed Minnesota. With his uncashed checks, he bought a mortgage, a two-story house, brick, no cellar, an attic with no windows. Upstairs, he built a shower and a locker for dry goods, beans, canned peaches, condensed milk, and flour, a baking soda solution, a bleaching solution, and soap. Sometimes I heard him climb the stairs at night to check his provisions. Some nights, he heard the sirens and clutched my mother's arm. Some nights, he never stopped climbing, up through the roof, above the heavy clouds. Thank you. Thank you, Terri. That was, that was a wonderful, that last one I really, that was really moving. But I also have to tell you, only a poet can turn dissection into a love thing. Thank you so much. Did I see Gene, Dr. Gene? Yes, I think I'm here finally. All right. Okay, so Dr. Gene Powell is an author of poetry and essays with five books in print and a cultural critic online. She's a writing consultant and a college instructor. Gene Powell's poems have appeared in several print and online journals, including Essence Magazine, Hate Ashbury Literary Journal, and her poem Next Time won first prize from the Detroit Writers Guild in 2002. Please welcome Dr. Gene Powell. Good evening, everyone. And I do apologize for being in another time zone in my mind. I'm going to start with a short poem about American history. For those who never liked history, I've condensed the civil rights movement into one and a quarter pages. If the shoe fits, buying a new pair of shoes, second nature, nothing to fear, get on the bus, sit next to the driver, walk into the mall, find a comfortable chair, signal a clerk, wait for the right fit, piece of cake, easy as pie. My father, he bought shoes through mail order, Sears Robux Wishbook, because you couldn't try them on in any store he knew. Guess somebody heard about it, finally did something. Capitol Hill, the White House, maybe the Supreme Court. Suddenly, you could go downtown, walk into retail, sit on a Nagahide chair, and try some on for size. One thing, though, nobody told the tight-lipped clerk about service with a smile. Imagine, if you will, dressed in your best brown skin and shiniest braids, trying on patent leather and Mary Jane's under the flinty gaze of one who last visited your neighborhood in the moonlight, dressed all in white America, where all things are possible. Some people may remember that Kathy Freeman was the first Aboriginal gold medalist, and she also, at that Olympics, I believe she lit the Olympic flame, and as she was doing it, I had this image. Next time is a meditation on ancestral memories. Waiting into reflections, immersed in the roar of the crowd, free Kathy walked toward the center of the earth, lowered her torch to the still waters, ignited a running ring. The fire dance surrounded her. Please do not let them burn her. Logic said they left her a way to escape. They won't burn her. She's their only Aboriginal symbol, pioneer, and champion. Reason replied, they burn symbols, have incinerated pioneers, may sacrifice champions. Do not let them burn her. She would make such a glowing sacrifice, consecrate the games, fire their spirits, purify the hemorrhaging history of Down Under's new world order. So brave, her grace in silent, running waves all around her. Do not let them burn her. A sly miracle woman, she escaped the burning, stepped clear of the ring, leaving the fire this time, and faced the arena, where the crowd waited for the games to begin. We live in challenging times. This is called the noise of tomorrow. Look, I don't know how I got here. Some celestial contract in the Akashic records, or a spacecraft ran out of fuel, whatever. There may have been some colossal misunderstanding back in the day, an angst-ridden war among the gods. One minute we are progressing on a picture-perfect planet, and the next millennium or two, we are at each other's throats in constant mesmerizing warfare. I'm telling you, I honestly don't know how I got here. And about those five-year plans and ten-year plans, do you seriously believe I ever thought about either option? I'm here by accident. Remember, there was no grand design, at least none that I'm willing to recall. Did my planet disintegrate like Krypton? Or my magical island disappear into the mists when faith took a holiday? I'm the lady of the lake without my Avalon, or the last temple priestess after the collapse of Atlantis. How on earth do you expect me to plan for tomorrow? It's too noisy here. Too many people with no room for dignified retreats, where you wander alone on an icy wind-swept shore. Babies are crying for lost mothers. Mothers are crying for disappeared children. Women are widowed for profit. And the old are without wisdom. Look, I did not bargain for any of this. As a matter of fact, I may not have been allowed to bargain at all. Some bearded guy holding tablets written in stone, an oracle or two from a cave in Greece. Will I ever get a recount of any votes, an appeal to a higher court? The noise of tomorrow is here today, and I need earplugs and a game plan and a witness. Can I get a witness? When I read about these legendary women who waged a war against one of the largest empires in the world, I had to write about them. Remember our names? 2000 years ago, we lived and fought and died. You may not remember, but our names are carved in stone, in legend, in the hearts of our people. Small and wiry, we women championed fierceness. Was it not enough? The Han invaded our nation. We even paid taxes to those patriarchal bullies. They raised our taxes. My husband protested, and the Han invaders had him executed. Did they think I would retreat to a house by the Red River and grieve in widow's weeds? They clearly knew nothing about the sturdy women of the Hong River Delta, the Crimson River. My sister and I raised an army of 80,000 women and men. We fought this Han intrusion, sturdy and fierce and unrelenting. We fought the invaders year after year. Even in our defeat, the Han did not win. My sister and I fell on our swords, but our ghosts fed them nightmares for 900 years. In retreat, the enemy dragged their swords. When young men and women joined the military, they signed a contract. Paragraph 9C of the enlistment contract states, in the event of war, enlistment in the armed forces continues until six months after the war ends. But what if the war is never declared and it never really ends? Stop the loss. One. Rumors of war were added again. Only the 20th time since I came of age, civilian bodies litter foreign boulevards, American coffins fill airport corners. We watch with resignation as reservists go off to die. Involunteers unaware of stop loss and other slide devices utilized to keep them at the front forever. Now the women are dying. American women, along with thousands of civilians, they tell us these consecrating battle fields in Afghanistan, a land so ancient that time has forgotten. You're the ones I'm speaking to. Easy to overlook the loss of women, unless you see through patriotic headlines into under financed corners of your TV screen at two in the morning. Look closely at photographs ending the news hour on PBS and you'll see lipstick traces and lots of hair under military headgear with names like Emma and Maria confronting you in silence. That's how you tell. Of course you only see those photos after they die and next to Ken are notified. What did they hope to achieve these women? To serve well and support their families. You read about the Native American Marine single mother on a reservation whose death so far away left two children with only grandparents to care. You know that earnest carpenter on cable who gives away houses to families in crisis. He and his crew built a strong new house for survivors of the dead reservist. Two bewildered elders raising orphans forever wounded by the loss they were powerless to stop. Two, you watch the six o'clock news with one eye open and an ear half copped while you multitask in your busy life. The war again edited to fit your TV screen. A high pitched wailing scream then medics load an American fighter into an ambulance cameras avoiding her face while the journalist embedded drones on and on. Clearly we must not know about her death before her parents. Only this one didn't die. They shipped it to Germany then home to the VA. Germany called MASH in Iraq asking why did you send her? You know she won't make it. They answered back wait and see. This one will surprise you. Such a long battle she faced at home just a reservist getting second class care. But doctors and family fought the system. Somehow she got what she needed to survive. Her brain kept on swelling. So doctors removed part of her skull stored it inside her good leg for safekeeping. Months of PT for the leg that was shattered, fighting through pain, surgery, more pain. She did not recognize anyone from before, not even the man who visited each day. Hospital staff fell in love with her courage. State side called Germany and MASH in Iraq. See how she's doing. She made it. Come see. One day she remembered who she was, remembered the man who never left her side. By the date of the wedding she was walking with a cane. She kept both legs and her skull was intact. A hard fought, hard won bittersweet ending. If only we could stop the loss, enforce a ban on undeclared wars, raise the enlistment age to 30, draft the old before the young. Hold the president accountable. Find the courage to fight for these women and all the others. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Powell. The span of time, historically rich, contemporary, always lyrical and beautiful. Thank you so much. Appreciate you. Appreciate you being here. Thank you. I will add my voice now with a couple of poems. This first one is from my childhood. It's called You Could Not See Us From Russell Street and Russell Street is a street in Berkeley, the town where I was born. You could not see us from Russell Street. Two blond and blue eyed, one brown and braided, two houses on the same lot. Daily we toddled down the facing porch steps to meet in the middle of the concrete driveway. To play and run and scream and run, ten sticky with the results of the candy necklaces and juices of fresh pineapple. Eyes covered with matching red-framed sunglasses from trips to separate beaches. But you could not see us from Russell Street as we hopscotch and jump rope and spun and spun. No notice of two getting redder and one getting browner as we laughed and laughed and giggled and danced. Eating bologna sandwiches and drinking from each other's cups. Skins not included, invited, observed, except when wounded. But you could not see us from Russell Street where we knew nothing of difference or lack of joy. We loved what we were to each other. It was more than enough. These days even when I tell you because you could not see us from Russell Street, you do not believe we were real. This next one I'm dedicating to the earth because we also have Earth Day this month and it's called the Big Breakup. You named me Mother Earth and in my last days I look back and wonder if you had believed I was a man would you have respected me more would you have treated me like the devoted caregiver taken for granted thinking I would always be here because mama always got you even when you slowly and deliberately break her heart. I have come to know you like the indifferent children you are greeting and uncaring where those among you with the loudest voice and the biggest bag of coin silence those who want to save me you shake my poor producing unnatural fire my heat does not subside my tears evaporate I only imagine I can cry gone are my seas of clear aqua comb debris clouds reflection of the exploding stars melting in my fever freezing in my chill I am starving and seeking the sweet breath that is no longer there I choke on my dryness I drown in my wetness my greens are dust my browns are mold I am toxic to life my rancid smell repels I cannot control my bowel as I spill over into the unknown and places where my wardrobe no longer fits I am naked and alone stripped of my riches as flames rage across my belly with misplaced rain steaming from my head poison droplets swipe right across my chest landing at my center I give birth sporadically in strange places where some things do not belong there was an order here there was a freedom there was a love openings for new beginnings the portal is closing my feet are missing my soul is heavy movement is an elusive dream I have grown tired I must rest my soul by leaving you if enough are left who really love me you may find my hiding places while the sun continues to reveal and the moon lights the empty dark and this last one I dedicate to the changing world that some of us seniors find a little perplexing sometimes but we we still try to keep up with things it's called true new there is something disconcerting and abrasive about the brand new the shiny too clean no history emptiness of it all immersed in it I find no lingering aroma a signal to the soul that we are indeed here and remain actual new is not a true thing yet not honest like the slightly worn carpet with deep fresh vacuum cleaner marks that speak our presence in crooked lines before welcoming footprints obliterate and the paths of genuine cycles return new is not a true thing yet like the freshly sheeted bed with graceful and purposeful purposeful indentations marking the places of past sickness and healing love and peaceful dreams there is a certain discomfort and unknown to the brand new with this overly shiny brashness and lack of experience absence of knowing new is not a true thing yet like the face beginning to droop from a to rigid center all the while protecting the brightness of the brown eyes looking just like they did when they were new I thank you thank you all for being here this evening I hope that everyone enjoyed it and as I like to say when closing no poetry no peace say it with me poets and I thank you all you're all brilliant and wonderful one two three no poetry no poetry no peace no peace have a good night poetry no peace thank you thank you thank you all right thank you all and I would love to invite you to join us for the Cheryl and Taren show I'm kidding but Cheryl helps me with a monthly writers event and this month's topic is the birth of a poem and the link to join us is available on our website under events mi library.org and I'm going to put it right now in the chat space so you can join us if you like it's a zoom event on Friday April 21st at noon and we're going to talk all about how poems are born and Dr. Jean Powell will be one of the speakers at that event so thank you all for coming thank you as always Cheryl and Sandra and Carla Terry and Jean hope to see you around in the real world or cyberspace it's all good thanks so much for sharing your your art with us tonight and happy uh National Poetry Month yeah thank you thank you thank you Cheryl thank you so much Taren and Cheryl all right good night good night good night