 Go live. Welcome everyone. We're going to get started in just a moment. Welcome everyone. It's seven o'clock and I'm just going to give some quick announcements. I'm Anisa. I'm your librarian tonight. I work at San Francisco Public Library. I get to host and promote amazing humans. So I love my job most of the time. I just now put if you've ever done an event with me I have a running doc for every event. So as resources and books come up we'll add them but also the links to any upcoming events as well as links to tonight's authors. All right so we are here for another third year in a row of celebrating Filipino American History Month curated by Barbara Jane Reyes and she always brings the most amazing and fierce writers. I am so happy that she agrees for the third year to be with us. We would like to acknowledge that we occupy the unceded ancestral homeland of the Ramya Chisholoni peoples for the original inhabitants of the San Francisco Peninsula. We recognize that we benefit from living and working on their traditional homeland and as uninvited guests we affirm their sovereign rights as First Peoples and wish to pay our respects to the ancestors, elders and relatives of the Ramya Chisholoni community. And if you've ever heard of Sikorite Land Trust or not you should check them out. They are an all women-led Oakland-based land-back movement organization and they just successfully secured some land back from the city of Oakland the first I found this I don't know about this fact but the first city in California to return land back I don't know but anyway it has happened and it's great news. Upcoming events we have for the sixth Filipino American International Book Festival and it's returning finally in person at our library two full days stacked events like stacked not just for adults but children's events too the most amazing writers there's also going to be a marketplace and Sunday the amazing Maria Ressa will be it'll be a streaming talk that she does and don't miss it it's going to be great and I'll put in the chat the link to the bookfest because the lineup and the schedule are mind-blowing so please come check that out we're going to be lots of spreading out all over the library so we can gather bring your mask and we'll have a nice gathering it's nice to be back in person. Part of Litquake and Alta Journal the library has a bi-monthly book selection where we encourage all San Francisco to read the same book at the same time and it's called On the Same Page it's also a drinking game we do at the library anytime someone says On the Same Page and Mr. Roberto Lovato will be in conversation with Vanessa Hoa Saturday October 22nd 2 p.m. on this beautiful sixth floor Soroyan gallery October 23rd a there's 23 people on this lineup so far 23rd 23 people how to live creatively while BIPOC and if you don't know she's she's she's a waste eagle she is just a powerhouse in the Bay Area and she just has this way of bringing amazing creatives together so do not miss this artist writers performers it's going to be amazing and Sunday is great at the library because the farmers market is the same day once anyone book it's finally here our biggest literary event of the year where we celebrate we encourage everybody read this book in the Bay Area this is Ear Hustle unflinching stories from everyday prison life Nigel for and Erlon Woods they are amazing the book is really powerful the podcast is really powerful and they will be in conversation with Piper Kerman Thursday November 3rd 6 30 and I'm going to breeze through the amazing thing about this campaign is we get one a really nice budget from our friends in San Francisco public library that allow us to do two months of programming aligned with the book so we have some amazing amazing authors coming Sarah Cruz on Cruz on who wrote the book she was convicted for killing her her abductor and her rapist and her her violator Kristen Henning and Reginald Dwayne Betts Dwayne Betts is very not well-known poet but also formerly incarcerated and amazing amazing amazing organizations art art how art transforms the lives of incarcerated Damien Lenine just for a quick instance he was worked in the library prison self-taught artist well inside got out got his librarian degree and now he's getting his PhD so art definitely transforms life come check it out and then tons of organizations who are working either inside for incarcerated folks or in the reentry fields and all of this is sponsored by our friends in the San Francisco public library all right now we're going to jump into tonight's event and I'm super excited to have these amazing women here tonight and this is the night of Panay women is women is writers reading from their latest works love it so tonight we have Danny Quintos, Barbara Jane Reyes, Jen Soriano and Isabelle yeah and I'm going to read their bios and I already see there's a hand raise which is awesome we're going to have some time for Q&A at the end and like I said I put this link in here tonight's doc and I will add as we go along and we'll give some time for Q&A Denny Quintos is the author of the Poetry Collection to Brown Dots she's the winner of the April and junior prize and Python and a crastic chat book featuring photography by her sister Shelly Quintos she's a Kentuckian, a knitter, an educator, an Afro-Latian poet she received her BA from the Evergreen State College and her MFA in poetry from Indiana University her work has appeared in Poetry Magazine, Cream City Review, Cincinnati Review, The Margin, Best Poets 2015, The Lawn and Elsewhere. Quintos lives in Lexington with her kid, farmer's spouse and their little dog too Barbara Jane Reyes was born in Manila, Philippines raised in San Francisco she's the author of Gravities of Center Poeta in San Francisco, Diwake, Diwada, Diwada to love as as long invocation to daughter letters to young brown girl and want to peek into my notebook notes on penne liminality and I really can't wait to check that one out from the library. Reyes is also the author of three chat books for the city that nearly broke me, Cherry and Easter Sunday she received a BA in Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley her MFA at San Francisco State and she teaches in the Chingo Philippine Studies program at University of San Francisco she lives with her husband poet and educator Oscar Bermont in Oakland. Jen Soriano is a writer, performer, social movement strategist and author of the chat book Making the Tongue Dry. She's also co-editor of The Closer Liberation, a penne Activism Anthology spearheaded by Dr. Amanda Amoraro and DJ Kutun Kandi her first full-length book Nervous a collection of personal essays about healing the history we carry in our bodies is forthcoming from Amistad Harper Collins in 2023 yay Soriano writes about buried stories that long for air and the space to shine her work has received the Penelope Neven Prize for Fugie prose prize and the Fugie prose prize as well as fellowships from Vermont Studio Center Hugo House and the Jack Jones literary arts retreat originally from a land blocked area in southwest Chicago she now lives with her partner eight-year-old son and tween-aged water dog on a Duwamish territory of Seattle near Salish Sea she wants you to know that even if you've already eaten it's probably time to eat again I like it and then finally and without you know what is it last but not least Isabel Yap is a Filipino writer of speculative fiction and poetry occasionally she does freelance editing and copywriting she's also a product manager with a background primarily in startups and mobile apps she enjoys collaborating with technical terms to solve problems for users she uses empathy and curiosity in both career paths I like that too Yap's debut short story collection never have I ever is out now from Small Bear Press all right and I'm going to turn it over we're going to go in alphabetical order so spotlight on Danny okay I'm unmuted yes um let's see all right so thank you all so much thank you San Francisco Public Library and Anissa and Barbara Jane thank you so much for inviting me to be a part of this reading I'm so excited to share space with other Pni writers it's such a it's such like a rare and special thing especially for me in Kentucky where I was I was thinking about this the other day I was like I think there were two Asian-American students in my graduating high school class so needless to say it's really nice to be with other celebrating fill-am history month and and sharing space with you all so all right so I am gonna I'm gonna read a couple a couple teenage poems or tween age poems from the first part of my book which is very very tween so the first section of my book is girlhood so um I thought I would start it off with something that I I hope you think is funny I was told this is funny so this is age 11 a creaky fold-out sofa with copper flowers at mom's new old house is the new old bed I share with my sleeping sister while our pet hedgehog runs away and for months she scratches in the walls survives on crickets and roly-poly's until she returns lured by a peanut butter in a cage trap metal door snaps shut while I am belly down in a closet clubhouse flashlight reading the cd booklet to jagged little pill memorizing lyrics like I'm brave but I'm chicken shit like would she go down on you in a theater I don't know what these words mean but the feeling of reading cuss words in the dark and the nettle burn of alana's voice gives me some kind of power and mom lets me sing these cusses so long as I promise only at home where it's safe at school I'm the girl wearing weird outfits a blue daisy mini dress over jeans and everyone talks about me behind their palms a girl with blonde straight hair asks me where I got it smiling mean right into my face and when I dress up like michael jackson for a group project about the 80s one sparkly glove and PC hair pulled back in a ponytail crotch grabbing myself in high pitch voice I don't break character I am shameless the funny girl who didn't get invited to Courtney's freak dancing party but I do sleep over at my best friends where we empty her caboodle of eyeshadows and pencils on her bed smear colors on our eyes practicing for a middle school I make her watch the dirty dancing tape I snuck in my pillowcase and tell her they do it three times and with the volume down we see how baby gets put in a corner and patrick swazy glazed with sweat and lake water twisting his shiny muscles to the music she'll tell her mom the next morning at breakfast crying she'll say they did it three times we play the game we call what if while we fall asleep whispering into each other's hair what if duke pray they're asked you to prom and gave you his letterman's jacket everything that happened to the twins in sweet valley we want to happen to us what if jack olrich gave you a flower unlike any other in the world picture the rose from beauty and the beast withering under a glass dome we imagine these boys have been hiding in the air vents the whole time watching us slip bras off our boyish chests they elbow each other out of the way for the best view their faces striped with light obsessed as we are okay i'm gonna read one more girlhood poem this one is called six grade invisibility studies somehow my new blue jean flares became high waters and everyone could see my babyish purple socks my glasses got crooked on my face my hips spread wide and i started to bleed through my pants unpredictably this is when i tried to erase myself pushed my limp hair in front of my eyes to become invisible a boy in art class called me the n word and smiled i wanted to disappear and steal his backpack dump it out the window math book and pencils spilling in the courtyard where only birds could get in an orchestra class my bow sawed the wrong way during the moonlight sonata my notes too flat or too sharp the teacher made me play alone imagine a violin floating in the air squeaking i got caught passing a note in social studies triangle folded and flipped across the table i was made an example of a 500 word essay that no one wanted to write i ran slowest in gym class little legs pumping a full lap behind the athletic older girls who took the tights from my locker and tied them in a knot like a flag a pie i pretended it wasn't my locker pressed my back against the metal gills and tried not to breathe all the eyes watching the empty legs waving an imaginary wind i waited for everyone to change back into their old navy shirts and gap jeans gather their hair into ponytails and leave the bell rang in the empty locker room i untied the knot and slipped my invisible feet in like a jellyfish's translucent and stinging tentacles like its empty head a plastic bag um all right so i think um i'm gonna switch gear still a little girlhood but i feel like i need to bring it with the philand poems so um so this one is milkfish and this is based on a sebuano uh folktale milkfish if your mother craves milkfish when she's pregnant with you and if the sea stops putting their gaping mouths on your father's hook and if your father begs the sea for more he will owe the saltwater something you black haired and seven years old will be swallowed by a wave forget your best friends or the chapter book you haven't finished forget the freckled neck of the boy you stare at during english class and sometimes during mass forget to your mother's warm hands on your shoulders before she braids your hair into ropes her insamata sprinkled with cheese and sugar your feet won't fit in any pair of sandal or sneaker you'll feel those bones splay soft and straw maybe you imagine this underwater life as glint and dazzle scallop shell bikinis bottle nose dolphins and pearls plentiful as fish eggs instead the seaweed strangles you and sleep plastic six six pack rings handcuff your wrists and all the skeletons of smaller fish tangle in your hair like ugly combs cola cans are the only sparkle twisting their bodies into blades in the sand when the moon is a white circle your feet will come back walk to your old house where your father disappears into a quiet nothing and find your mother still cooking milkfish milkfish stuffed and baked fried in oil pickled in vinegar and garlic bodies not unlike your own let's see where's my where's my time at all right um okay i feel like whenever i when i read some of these poems i have to like really contextualize them and kind of like explain things and i don't really feel like i need to do that with this with this crowd so i'm just gonna jump into it y'all know about uh skin bleaching so this one's called pawn's white beauty my sister and i watch a commercial twin philippina beauties washing their faces they splash water like diamonds velvety suds black silk hair and smooth pink apple cheeks both paler than any relatives we've met here paler than the quiet welsh and japanese blood in both of us on the screen a blind date in a blazer rings the doorbell the more porcelain sister answers her fluorescence lights his stupid smile the door opens wider to reveal her apricot twin flushed with melanin next to the sharp pallid sister the man frowns we frown knowing that the next scene will be the sister sharing her secret potion just use pawn's white beauty fairness cream to bleach the sun from your skin to make you milky translucent on the second date he sees them both glowing ghostly identical laughing at how beautiful they've both become unable to tell which girl is his date we are two sisters in the middle of the world where the sun paints us bronze in the dark instant between commercials our brown faces appear in the tv's glass where they're blanched and smiling ovals once shown okay let's see so once again not going to give any context y'all know about manangal so i'm just gonna go into it i feel like i always like have to like compare it to a vampire and like explain what she does but like i'll get it so here's self-portrait is manangal they ask me where i'm from and the answer is hundreds of years old is that last name Spanish from Spain i sharpen my claws and answer carefully originally i say because colonization they tell me they need to read up on that when i split in two they don't understand they speak louder and slower they explain what should be done instead where are you really from or i don't see color i leave my brown legs and ass in a secret place and rise above meaning aerial bat's eye view inhaling through my nose and counting to ten i come back and combine with myself i fill in the bubble marked other i use a hyphen in the Philippines they deter me with seasoning salt garlic ash they reflect me ghostly on billboards erase my melanin with papaya soap and photoshop here i am repelled by questions mispronunciation fetish and the phrase i know how it feels to be i think i'm gonna read just just a couple more um so i'm gonna read this poem um i was i had to teach this like cultural competency class at work last week and it was all about microaggressions and then i realized that um this poem is about one of my earliest memories and it is a microaggression so this this poem is called all Filipino women are beautiful all Filipino women are beautiful an old man with white hair says to my brown full lip face and i don't know why but it doesn't feel like a compliment when he says this we're at the airport bags packed for a three day flight and maybe he's just asked where to i'm about four with crooked bangs and buck teeth my lola holding my hand and all the long lines maybe she just smiles or thanks the man after all we all want to be maganda like the Filipino Barbie on a friend's tall shelf hair swept into a shellacked knot gold beaded dress and her tiny waist clipped into the plastic stand i too think all Filipino women are beautiful or should be are supposed to be a certain kind of beautiful like this Barbie or photos i've seen of imelda with the same stiff wings as sleeves but they are not the same brown armed Filipino women i know that play pecoa with my lola and bring fields of puncit for the titas and slippers taking jeepneys in the shadow of a volcano instead these beauties are fair as the flesh crayon i use to color in everyone their lips painted pink their eyes smoky and tilted just so and maybe i carry this with me for years watching miss america pageants flipping through teen magazines never seeing myself but watching my reflection in this car's side mirror trying to tuck in my lips fold them against my teeth thinner like the other girls at my school like the girls i see everywhere i think i can maybe squeeze in two more okay so i'm i'm gonna read this poem i was just looking at the the final issue of the lantern review and i was reading um louisa gloria and ina carinias poems and i was like is there like a phil am chicken thing happening because both their poems were very chicken poems and so i was like i need to read my i need to read my chicken poem so this is um how to resurrect a chicken my lola's sort organ organs under the mango tree shiny wet plums and beans stuffing the empty body of a chicken they push sharp wet feathers into its skin and sew its head to body with a knife the older lola grabs its feet and dunks the body head first into a bucket of warm water a bubble at the surface swims down to the bottom the chicken swallows it and comes back to life splashing she pulls it out of the water its feathers dry and neck bleeding swings it onto the rock under her slipper foot she knocks the blood rusted hatchet against the chicken's throat and soft taps she holds a bowl of rice soaked dark with purple blood under the chicken's neck big grin and she tells me it's chicken chocolate the chicken's neck wound gulps blood from the blade and bowl the color from rice bleaching it white and dry the gash shrinks pinches itself shut like an eye she sets the chicken upright it walks backwards away from her shaking its feathers into unruffled shape last poem all right so this this poem is the oil painting that hangs on my lola's wall my imagined philippines takes place in a painting orange sunset mirror on the water straw huts and caribou something about rice swept in its hulls on the tile floor a pot of rice over an outdoor flame salt fish heavy air and accent dusk and itch sweet diesel and smoke this landscape is a feather caught in the float between bird skin and concrete i do not really know this place i imagine my lola's stories in the setting mudfish scales glinting in the cracks of floors and the burning smell of work and gasoline the youngest of three sisters their names so full of poetry crescent sienna marcosa and ramadios a girl worn down by all the things she has to bear this dim world and all the others before her thank you beautiful all right barba jane you are up i have unmuted myself danie that was gorgeous thank you so much for that anisa and uh san francisco public library thank you so much for having us this is our third year of uh virtual uh philam history month uh literary events and i'm always so happy when you contact me to curate another cohort of readers and and i was saying to my co-readers here earlier that i you know folks's writing become known to me and and um i just want to share space with them right and have uh you know and see what happens with the chemistry so thank you all for joining us folks um okay so what i'm gonna do is i am going to begin with the ending poem to my last book of poetry um letters to a young brown girl and this is the last letter the last dear brown girl letter which is which is comprised of 100 itemized sentences dear brown girl you have come to me to ask how a brown girl writes and lives lives and writes when it feels like no one cares you have come to ask me whether it is true that no one cares for some brown girl you have come to me because you need me to see you yes it is true if our identities are not for sale then no one cares about some brown girl i'm sorry if what i say here are not the things that you want to hear from me some say it is bourgeois privilege for the battleground to be the page i think the page could be one of the weapons in our armories diversity inclusion and multicultural blunt the narrative patriarchy and empire disorient status and privilege pervert our aim let's put those words back on the shelf where they belong i have no identity to sell what is mine is precious to me though others would tell me nothing is mine not the air in my lungs not the ground beneath my feet you may unfollow me on social media if you don't like what i'm saying and this is okay you ask for kindred words from me because like you my ancestors words are slowly losing their ground you have come to me fearing kapua hoping i could allay this fear you have come to me seeking kapua hoping i could clarify this site i learned that kapua is seeing the self in others i think of kapua as a sanctuary of shared selves speakers of our elders words do not wish to see themselves in the flushed and stuttering selves we have become we can't find the correct idioms fast enough we no longer know the correct accent marks and glottal stops we came of age here silent witnessing kapua's erosion and erasure you want me to affirm that the proper response is outrage you want me to affirm your outrage yes there is outrage a heat in my blood it is a silent slow and steady burn but there is so much sadness being so torn from my elders and kin but there is so much noise so much shouting so much shouting above the shouting this is where we start shutting other people up deciding who gets to speak and what they get to say this is where we assign a price to voice and who must pay in order to speak this is where we come to buy and sell voice and then voice is only for those who can afford it this is where we invent adages about voicelessness and we continue to shout the things other people are shouting and we continue to shout and it becomes easy to ignore all of the shouting and we continue to shout and it becomes easy to pretend nobody is shouting i want to think we all resist becoming the thing we are shouting at the this may not be true how may we honor this thing called voice and how can we honor our kapua i fear all the shouting depletes are low ob which is where the wisdom of our elders has rooted conquerors documented this wisdom as superstition godlessness the lore of lowly women and unenlightened people you have come to me asking that i serve as vegan and now i see we had not previously agreed on what needed illumination we now busy ourselves with curriculum vitae items noteworthy mentions hit counters hyperlinks and into social media posts from glass ceilings the dropping of names onto unswept gum stuck floorboards which barely cover the dirt i do not know that our elders envisioned this dim administrative morris for us you must understand i thought we came here to discuss liberation and now i see that we had not previously agreed upon defining the term together one brown girl's liberation is another brown girl's bloated bureaucracy monuments of microaggression mansplaining and migraines one brown girl's woke is another brown girl's mess of vacuous memes and info bites as if these things were precious clean water during centuries long drought why must one brown girl one brown girl's words doom another brown girl to a racer why must one brown girl's words be buried for being too much for being not enough for being unlike everyone else's can we return to that law but where there is potential for ourselves to grow into something other people we ourselves do not expect we can world build an orthodox fears from our law there unmapped places using everything we can get our hands on remember our elders were experts at third world improvisation filling our bellies despite famine salvaging masterworks from basura we marvel at how low and how few the parts are required for making masterpiece let there be no romance no artifice here our elders world building gave us life i see now my late father's love for swap meets and junkyards through a different lens he took the broken the throwaways last year's off-brand items inkjet printers scientific calculators so many lenses and glasses digital wrist watches remote control race cars landline telephones he dissembled tinkered and reconfigured these into something else sometimes you break apart the old thing if only to find that one reusable part sometimes he made art and someone ribbons affixed to their title plates this was my father's little sometimes he failed and we were left with jagged mountains of parts in his garage this was also my father's law he was a master of salvage and scavenge and we were ashamed of his junk i want to think this was my father's way of telling us he knew the sheen of prestige in this country dulls i want to think he knew we could never buy prestige in the first place i never wanted to agree with him i fought with him until i could no longer deny much evidence was in his favor i thought all my classmates lived in accessorized barbie dream houses arranged tidy inside their barbie dream houses lemon oil polished dining sets i thought all of my classmates lived matching tupperware lives arranged tidy inside their Tupperware PBJs on uncrusted wonderbread they were whole and wholesome and we were something else we learned the words for what they thought we were we took those words into our bodies and their dull blades hollowed us to incompletion we were told to translate hyah as shame others translated as propriety a dignity that comes from the inside the law and this is a lot different from shame my father's art pieces were sometimes incomplete and that itself was a narrative let there be no shame in being incomplete my father's art pieces were sometimes imperfect and that itself was a narrative let there be no shame in being imperfect i am one of my father's incomplete imperfect pieces my father's junkyard scavenge is now my unruly poetic statement my verse monstrosities my mixed up diction i'm trying to assign it order but most times it will not abide people say why aren't you ashamed people say why do you broadcast our shame people say why don't you just shut up people say why are you still here people say why haven't you disappeared have you ever been made to feel so little have you ever made anyone feel so little if art is a series of fine lenses and the shame is not hard to see beneath those lenses we are misfitted parts jammed together fractured at the edges dirtied from so much mishandling beneath the lenses we are sad little colonies hoarding our second hand items beneath the lenses we are sad little colonies frantic for our grind covered shelters see how we are not a smiling suburban single family home owning tv sitcom nuclear body inside the body that is our overcrowded house our fists have made holes in the walls our hands throw glass plates mismatch plates any object within object within reach inside the body the heat rises fibers tear and unravel vessels collapse the body shuts down inside the broken dirty dark people that we are low has been torn from us it continues to be torn from us this is trauma this trauma is not a little thing that you can brush off your shoulders this trauma is not a little thing that makes you interesting and diverse you want to smack a smug motherfucker for saying that to your face if your loob has been torn from you this is an act of terror if your loob has been torn from you this is not done by an invisible hand if your loob is repackaged relabeled and sold back to you at a premium send it back this jagged wound opened insulted for others to enjoy how we smart this is terror at some point we stop asking who is assaulting us the pleasure they derive tearing us from our loob i think we should start asking again i think we should start asking why inside the body roots thicken and tangle to repair us it may not be pretty but it will hold us together i'm sorry if the things i'm saying here are not the things you wish to hear you may unfriend me on social media you may block me on social media and i'll be okay with this maybe loob translates as heart i think the heart is only part of that i don't think that we should stop making art from our little do you okay and now i am going to read what i thought was going to be the closing poem to my most current poetry manuscript and then i looked at it again and i thought well maybe this actually should be the beginning of my next manuscript and it is called daughter song diaspora um which won the elizabeth alexander creative writing award from meridians uh transnationalism and feminism journal which was like that's that's kind of dope so i'm i'm pleased about this so this is daughter song diaspora one this is my story the one i made up about myself and told to no one the one i scribbled into my notebook that nobody knew about they say my mother fastened her wings and she flew across the ocean back to her own mother's nest where i was pulled from her body drooling salted already browned eyes open already speaking already asking they say my mother then refastened her wings and then she flew away this is my book of holy things two the first time my mother flew away i was still learning my first language my Psalms of paalam which is to say my mother tongue's absence is classifying beautiful birds in flight is fibrous diaspora that the wind lifts into myth next it was my turn to fly to find her in the cold gray of san francisco bay uprooted tropical seed all milk teeth talismans questions in my many tongue to mouth i learned to bind my poems in abaca i learned to speak in subtractive tongues tongue tight always too accented or too unaccented winged syllable spat and grounded consonants hardened as silken seeds scattered drought deprived and dumb i sang in secret in the dirt i listened girl child orb weaving egg shell root and bark into time compose spells from pine cones ladybugs and lullaby three agiamanak agony in the garden is the first sorrowful mystery ave maria napno ave maria in abundance and all this novena to no avail bugsuck this beautiful blood-worn babalan mubae become brittle vessel babae brimming to burst kapsat cozy kadwa once in my mother's cocoon carcino sarcoma has instead recast her a cleave in chrysalis she closes her eyes diwatha diostiangina deities deities of air of water of sky when you decide to take her from us dear diva please brush her hair and sing her a lullaby eve her even song an ever-blipping cadence electronic vespers early into dawn forget gattaran fragrant green girl hood of my mother where i wanted just one moment of grace with her but now grief is my gold and my ghost and my gravity hung in filled with hummingbirds alika in the chest homing here the heart monitor i cannot unhear it thrumming in my own hollowed out heartwood in an ideal world this poem all my tongue all my poems i wouldn't tone in my mother's mother tongue jusco as in juscopo just how much one woman body endures as kaasin kaasian na kami kalapati crewing like us mourning flame-breasted blacknaped and hearts bleeding luck bye in the song that goes lumipad ka taibidang maya i'm thinking of laia and laiu to matrice my mother's mother used to say we were molded for mud now only memesis of mythology and miracle nagan hers meaning living one light mother of life little bird nalan what had she prophesized when she named me oh yai sing oceanic ask if grief tips us to overpour ask if this is what one's lungs become when overcome puso baanana pagbumana okana kebarbara the quick tongued queen mother birth quick tongued brown daughters keoror rabii remember our river remember our robin's eggs shells cool blue robed in rosy sunset nesting and resting in my mother's jasmine's sugat gen suratmet sing sampagita and seashell she has slipped out of sakit into starlight spirit she has soared into the swallowtail sky tutubing tumanggap ng manapak pak at pakatapos transfiguration hanggang langit how to translate any of it ulila of this untied umbilicus unknowing untranslatable all i can say is this sha ang gat ng aking lahat and that is all there is to that bosses what color what texture what timber did hers have see above regarding forget wala na bark it out by and why and why what all i should have asked her what all i should have said whether she would have answered ecce films held up to lightbox showing images of trees rooting branching flowering bearing fruit seeding and rooting again and again yuck up and also yari how to navigate the passage of this mother body zar suela ay apu juice we always loved a good song and dance number we kind of lived in one once didn't we four the last time my mother flew away she must have returned to her mother i want all the maps almanacs of wind and ocean currents i want a silver compass inlaid diaspora marking true north layer leather player leather prayer books in my mother's mother tongue olive wood rosaries copper dowsing rods bronze egg shaped agimat what languages must i relearn what sacred songs what incantation shall i pull from deep memory into the light i pray please help me find my mother i hold to my heart my silvered amulets virgin mother headstrong tokaya lightning rose clad wild daughter little one of mighty noise how may i regain my faith cleanse by the waters of fatima she shines starlight let me find my mother in a state of pure unfettered joy and that is it that's what i have thank you very much thank you Barbara jane that was really amazing and wonderful and i love bringing in the family um you know fall is time to bring in the ancestors and bring them close so that was really really lovely all right jen you are next thank you and let me get you spotlight all right there we go okay we're gonna take a breath after that that was utterly beautiful and um thank you for sharing your father and mother with us through this poem so it's just beautiful um hi hi everyone i i'm really happy to be here i i just am so honored to be part of this panel with the four of you and um to be celebrating Filipino-american history month i rarely get asked to do anything for Filipino-american history month and so this feels like an honor uh i am going to start out with something that i wrote recently for the 40th anniversary of the Filipino-american national historical society and who by the way for folks who do not know are the original advocates for uh Filipino-american history month and it's actually the 30th year 30th anniversary of of pam so this is called this land is an exchange with a shout-out to Barbara and Posadas for the historical context in the piece and my dog wants to chime in all right do you all know this one if you do i invite you to sing along from the redwood forest to the gulf stream waters this land was made for you and me i grew up in between the redwood forests and the gulf stream waters in the bread basket of the united states the american midwest the heartland in a flyover area of what would mostly be a flyover state except for the city of chicago i grew up in a flyover area at a crossroads of suburbs and sod farms sluice and septic tanks on a gravel street sometimes littered with dead deer and turtle shells as a child i had no idea how we got there according to our neighbors my family spoke real good english and they thought it was cool that we had an italian last name according to my parents in their non-verbal language we had always been there grown here like the corn stalks rooted in cargill soil those yellow kernels of corn stuck hard to firm cobs hung from stalks that stood proud in rows that just made sense when i saw those sane kernels of corn appear in our bowls of kinataan and in our mouthfuls of mahablanca i knew that my parents must have been right we sprouted here we fruited here we never crossed the earth's largest sea later i learned about my favorite information we speak of waves in between the waves are ripples like fields of rippling wheat that look like an ocean of brown and gold my parents wrote one of these ripples to america during the time of quotas when only 100 filipinos can enter per year because this was the quantity of independent little brown brothers and sisters the united states government deemed it could bear one second okay full disclosure i printed this out on uh on scrap paper and printed it on the wrong side of the scrap paper so i tried to read in between the other words and that's a network so i am going to pull it up on my on my screen i was like i remember it i can and i'm like no i don't remember it okay so i have it on the screen okay great um where did i leave off okay okay rippling wheat that looks like an ocean of brown and gold uh yes right okay little brown brothers and sisters that the united states government deemed it could bear unless you were a war bribe active military or qualified for educational exchange before coming to america my father almost took a job at the philippine general hospital he also almost rooted himself in his birth soil as a doctor at a family clinic in tondo but he qualified for educational exchange and so he went to america and stayed before coming to america my mother had a pharmacy in gala oakan city but she wanted to get a phd in industrial pharmacy in new york she would have qualified for educational exchange but then she met my father they got married and they stayed educational exchange happened through the j1 visa system meant to quote promote a better understanding of the united states and other countries educational exchange was the source of some of the first philippinos in the heartland the self-financed pensionados who in the early 1920s and 30s went to study mostly at midwestern universities to pay for their educations they worked as waiters bellboys personal servants some worked on auto assembly lines in detroit educational exchange was the source of how my family got here on a program of skills trade but also pacification propaganda and foreign workforce development our america began as a pipeline of labor a return on investment for the 20 million dollars with which the us bought the philippines from spain but our america becomes what we make of it in a land of redwood forests gulf stream waters bars and stripes we are the light of a yellow sun to paraphrase bullosan america is in the eyes of those that are building a new world to quote harjo these lands aren't our lands these lands aren't your lands we are this land to quote ourselves listen to our stories for they are how we got here our stories are our songs of love and we will sing of us exchange the lyrics of this land with the words that we have tilled with our hearts okay thank you for bearing with me all right and so now this next one this is my next and last one um and i have a content uh note for anybody watching with with maybe with family with with small ones maybe um there's swearing and there's also some creepy stuff because it's a it's a ghost story it's a mumu story so and i act out some of the mumuness so could possibly get a little you know extra creepy so just just be fairly warned and it's all true every single word of it uh it's basically about um if if y'all if if there's any to goleg speakers out there it's about but i'm dumb but a couple of visitations very powerful visitations that i had from a very very uh good friend like a kapua soulmate uh and it is called ash light maybe it was a sign when you moved in with me and it turned out we shared the apartment with ghosts at first we thought they were airplanes just airplanes that extinguished the sun casting momentary darkness across the living room like a shadowy morse code but then one day we came home to the handprints they were small hands child's hands three of them forming a lopsided pyramid on our living room window you tried to wipe them clean with a towel and they stayed it took several swipes for us to realize that they were imprinted on the outside of the pain we peered out the window down the one-story drop to the concrete alley below what manner of child was this to have left three small handprints on the outside of our window pane in a narrow alleyway 10 feet above the ground we shrugged it off it was the mission anything could happen here we ate our burritos and smoked weed and watched infomercials till the early morning then went to sleep in our separate rooms not long after i was reading on my bed when i heard you dragging your laundry through the hallway only it sounded much heavier than laundry like you were dragging somebody i opened my door and you weren't there no one was there i closed the door and the dragging sound resumed i pushed a chair up against the door then thought twice and tilted it to jam the top of its backrest and the door knob like i'd seen people do in movies frantically i fished matches from a drawer and let three candles on my altar willing the fire to draw good spirits and ward away the bad the flames sizzled alive and the dragging sound ceased i sat on the floor in front of the altar my body slumping in relief until my arm suddenly began to move my left arm began to make a wave my right one formed a circle what the fuck what the fuck i thought as i watched my body being moved by something or some other body i tried to freeze i tried to spring up onto my bed but my limbs were no longer my own when you came home later and i told you what had happened you said we'd better do some ceremony or some shit to clear the air we never did we moved out not because of the ghosts but because you were stealing money to pay rent and also eating all my food after we'd moved we found out that a man who used to live in that apartment had died on the stairwell outside and then another had supposedly killed himself on the back steps when i walked by the apartment a few months later and saw that it was still empty the building manager told me the place was hard to rent because people never stayed for long we had become some of those people never staying always leaving i rarely talked to you between then and when you left for good i was pissed at you for stealing money and for lying about it and i was pissed at you for eating all my cereal and for always leaving one goddamn flake at the bottom of the box but mostly i was angry at you for dying and then i was scared as hell that you came back when we first met you were wearing a suit the color of ash a friend introduced us and it was immediately a collision of minds we said nice to meet you in one breath and started talking shit to each other in the next from that point forward we were Bonnie and Clyde Thelma and Louise we shared laughter and singing to keep our demons at bay were companionship as a shroud to mask our loneliness a dear friend later said he would give his eyes for you and i replied i would give mine first two particles in proximity collide like palm of hand and bata skin like sand becoming glass chemical physics a fact tells us like dissolves like opposites entangle dark absorbs light until atoms flow across the void nature abhors a vacuum shortly after we met we joined a band we spent so much time together that when you moved in with me the rumor mill ground doubt to dust everyone knew we were a romantic couple we like to add grist to the mill feeding the narrow imaginations that could not envision two sys hetero presenting people in a deep but platonic relationship we made it a point to attend weddings together where we danced and posed like prom dates meanwhile our reality was this you were my brother and you were more there are no sufficient words to describe our relationship on this plane your light kept me tethered to this world and when you left at first there was no good explanation for for why your body failed you rumors flew you had overdosed you were poisoned someone found a lock of hair in a plastic bag and said you'd made a deal with the devil the doctor sent a piece of your heart tissue to the centers for disease control and what they found was coxsacu virus a common virus that causes hand foot and mouth disease only in rare cases can it cause sudden deaths you were one of those rare cases a 29 year old otherwise healthy person a dancer a mover without health insurance who had died from a virus overwhelming your heart these were pre-pandemic days and perhaps because your death was so unbelievable it was easier to believe that you would come back about a month after you died I was alone in my apartment watching a discovery channel show on paranormal phenomena the show had ended and the credits were rolling along with strange symphonic music theramines were woozing and deep base was thumping and then suddenly my phone rang hello what I heard made my arm hair stand on end the voice on the line was stuttering unmodulated my body went cold who is this the voice repeated more shrill this time it was you supposedly you had taken over our friend Angela's body you could have asked first your ex-girlfriend was on the other line explaining to me what was happening I think Angela is channeling BJ she said I'm putting her or him back on my hairs were still on end I listened I answered questions I asked questions and then I got used to the stuttering and the unearthly prosody of the voice we talked for a full half hour and by the end of the phone call I really felt that I had spoken with you a month after you died you told me to marry the guy was dating I did you told me to check up on our bandmate who was using again I tried before we hung up you said we'd talk again I like to think now that you are like the ghosts who inhabited our old apartment but more settled and kinder in the way that you like to haunt fast forward one year from the chill of san francisco to the higher ground of taos new mexico I've been sent here by co-workers who believe that a silent meditation retreat will break me out of a harmful cycle of depression burnout and pain clink clink clink rings the iron bell it's time for evening walking meditation before leaving I walk upstairs to visit our altar to the deceased I had forgotten a photo so I tore a corner from the top sheet of a yellow legal pad and scrawled your name bj alisago and ballpoint pen embarrassed by the clumsiness of my tribute I had placed the paper scrap partly hidden on the farthest corner of the altar now I step into the room to approach the center of the altar but my body begins to move strangely and I suddenly recall the night in our old apartment when something made my body dance I try to walk straight toward the altar but instead my right leg crosses in front of my left and pushes me to the side again and again for no good reason I am doing involuntary curtsies lurching diagonally across the room when my body finally stops I'm at the far corner of the altar immediately in front of the torn yellow paper with your name what the hell I say in my head bj are you here in response my gaze lifts to the window where I see the gray stone fire circle in the meadow should we go to the fire I ask silently and in my heart my mind I hear ashes to ashes and dust to dust you're with me I feel glee like a child reunited with a long lost playmate I pick up my legs the lurching is done and I run downstairs and out the door this is fun I giggle to the wind around me twilight is turning the sky from indigo to ink the tree shadows converge with the mountain peaks to form darkness ashes to ashes and dust to dust like a mantra these words repeat in my mind and I feel your push on my back lighten then leave no no you can't go I hear myself saying out loud desperate don't leave I really I do not I do not want to be alone again as I say these words my foot hits a stone I've reached the fire circle you've come and gone but you are leaving your mark a halo of ether and stardust I look down at the circle orange embers pulsing I look left a dozen points of light ignite as other retreat goers turn on flashlights in near synchronicity I turn around the main cabin glows as the caretaker hangs two kerosene lamps from the eaves one more turn a fire in the sanctuary where our meditation leader has coaxed flames to life you are showing me 360 degrees of your return the way your love leaves its prints keeps us reaching toward the void toward a space full of matter at last my gaze moves skyward and there appears venus shining like the first night star thank you that was so scary that was good that was really good all right and again not last but not least isabel are you okay try to hide here we go adding the spotlight all right isabel yeah great um well I'm still freaked out about the ghost I believe in ghosts so but I believe that they don't come to me so hopefully nothing was called by that yeah well I'm very grateful to hear from everyone here and thanks to everyone who's listening in here or elsewhere or after I thought I'd start by reading two poems and then I'll read a section of the story so the first poem I'll read is called alamat it's available online and you can find it on my website or a link there but I'll get started um alamat the banana plant her hand and the embodiment of being left behind her hand beneath the soil the weight of leaves and dirt what to make it hold what the word held even means terrifying secrets buried in the yard why must her love be the reason behind a swishing sword you are not a witch your breathless prayers are not magic the volcano ladies one of them was very angry there was violence can you hear the word slope without thinking of a woman's breast do you consider lava first or ash what is being buried in this tale whose body equates to praise maria kiss the villager wanted to marry him was tempted to slap him lay with him the farmer the farmhand the priest the barrio mayor her hair seemed endless in their fingers her skin was not brown her curves could evoke groans like the hull of a boat wherever she lay even the earth wanted her the pineapple despite everything mother loved her loved her even through the lazy days and the fact that she would not rise for the smallest thing she knew this from the creases on mother space the glimmering tear multiplied a hundred times the fractured way the wooden spoon dropped from the old woman's trembling hand the sump agita because she is lovely they name her dawn of course she must fall in love with a man nearly gored by a wild pig but once they've sworn eternal love he must leave her and she must stand by the window and wait of course her last words must be you promised of course she dies of loneliness still whispering as expected the flowers on her grave smell sweet the lens onness but you weren't there they tell her you didn't see his egg white eyes the foam on the corners of his mouth the way he scratched his throat and took too long to die you say your fingers can remove the poison but we shall never again hunger for sweet thanks the termite i don't know the story i expect she wore a crown and death was involved the fish ensconcing corals bombed but never burnt that net these islands hemming us in explain the fist now fin these gradients of blue did she speak of home in bubbles did the story ever mention her thighs where was she swimming to thrashing in the water yet still so graceful the makahiya and what is wrong she hissed crouched on her knees with her hands over her face with being shy with choosing loneliness what is so wrong with crying maria again so many marias lined up sisters and wives new vile underage stooped and pregnant with skinned knees without breasts round eyed pebbles and sunburned faces undulating in a sea of thick black hair this isn't my story she wept she was wearing a torn scythe palm fronts a recycled dress from divasoria she was wearing nothing at all i could not say but her smile meant her fingers were cold as they brushed my lips and tipped my head upright now you go anak she said all right that's one poem and then the next poem is called the multiple lives of one in bedro so this one goes two children asleep in each other's arms by the gutter wreathed in tetrapax and plastic bottles in the wake of the flood their bodies the color of mud coated in mud once face buried in the other's neck one's arms snaked beneath the other sandal their lips the color of cigarette ash and grime from the river that tucked them into bed kwan with cataracts in his eyes puts down the blade he has been using to slice sugarcane it is the part in the story where the mayor comes to be unreasonably rude and to threaten hwan's beautiful teenage daughter who will be shown no mercy and josco it's that bit where the goon comes to crush one's bones one's spirit one will cry one will beg and the goon will break him and feel nothing his name is bedro he is only doing his job bedro wears butterfly clips in his hair he claims yaya put them there but we all know better we see how hwan shudders when bedro passes how that top button is buttoned how he cannot ignore the bruises bedro wears like a stack of bracelets all down his arm just another bonga accessory no bedro holds up his hand at the intersection motions with his baton and hwan slows the taxi to a stop as the donya in the backseat sighs at the text she just sent is it a loving sigh or an annoyed sigh hwan cannot tell bedro shakes his hips in time to the traffic countdown as the radio asks kailangan baba in memorization hwan nods to bedro and says peace be with you hwan's daughter makes a peace sign at bedro's daughter hwan's wife smiles at bedro's wife bedro shoulders his rifle unsure of what he is marching for he passes hwan on the street and hwan hands him a piece of pandesal it is such a tiny gesture but the bread is so hot in his hands in his mouth so salty and barely sweet the rain rages down and hwan races for bedro as bedro runs out of his house shouting for him they grab each other's hands they watch the river swell they know they'll be buoyed here it might be very lonely without the other they remember the blood in the sugarcane fields the butterfly clips the stoplight the song they sang in mass that day the breadcrumbs they remember something will be given something will be taken away okay and now i will be reading just a little bit from the start of the last story in my collection never have i ever oh it's shiny this came out last february so february 2021 and the last story is called the canticle for lost girls it's a the bit of a horror story it's about catholic school girls it's it's not it's fiction but it's basically all drawn from real life and things that happen to some things that happen to you know i guess parts of my high school so the main characters are made up and and what happened to them is made up but all the scenes are like actual so yeah i'll just be reading a little bit from the start and if you want to hear the rest you can pick up the book a canticle for lost girls have you ever noticed yourself on your knees and thought oh i don't like this i'm braiding andy's hair struggling through a complicated style i found on pinterest when she catches my eye in the mirror and says mommy how did you know nina cj how did you and nina cj and nina tisha become friends andy's eyes are humongous there's a deep dimple on one of her cheeks she's incredibly cute and i don't think that just because she's mine the only thing i don't like about her is she has this slight manipulative streak like when she calls me mommy or ray daddy lilting sweet ray always falls for it i try not to is it cruel to think of your own child this way to be suspicious of her but i'm suspicious of everyone ray can't decide if he finds it unseemly or attractive about me saying you're so printing all the time i feel like i gotta protect you while he kisses me and cups one of my breasts through my pambahai i love him too much to tell him i don't think i need his protection our moms were all lunch mothers so we hung out during lunch in grade one then in grade two and three we did summer swimming classes and were in the same section and joined the cooking club together i finished braiding the left side of her hair and secured with a goodie elastic she cries ouch but doesn't really mean it already she's squirming out of my grip to check how it looks in the mirror i still have to do the other side i say okay mommy you're so slow she giggles i don't want to hurt you so i'm trying to be careful her thoughtless jab stings even as i think what am i doing making my lovely daughter even lovelier i know what a terrible idea that is i know so well i can't even tell her the truth about cj and tisha how we spent most of our time at saint agnes not being friends hurting each other in that special way young girls do how we love each other now only because we called the dark as one voice how that happened our junior year of high school at our spiritual retreat when we summoned a cruel thing to destroy our cl teacher how i don't regret it and i wonder what that makes me even as i deny the answer a thing with secret claws a face in the mirror that swivels and hinging secret jaws our feet were dirty when we entered the retreat house our heels and soles covered in dried mud and dust they'd arrange the chairs in a circle around the room and asked us to spread out before descending the bus for volunteer work at a village halfway between the city and the retreat house they'd passed out slippers for us to wear instead of rubber shoes it was so obvious they were up to something message wise for two hours i sat inside a sari sari store with janelle montalban helping ailing babes are assigned mana sell toron and max candies and cigarettes we chit-chatted about it bulaga which was playing on the tv janelle and i took turns cradling the chubby infant that ailing babes had been carrying when we arrived several times a man or child came to ogle at us through the bars sometimes smirking and calling out there was a man napping in the back room that kept coughing each time he did janelle flinched back on the bus she told me that at some point when i wasn't paying attention ailing babes had mentioned that the man her son potentially had tb when we'd all found our seats miss calador home room teacher asked us to stand then let us in a prayer of thanksgiving for our safe journey we implored the lord for a holy and rich in retreat at amen she continued now girls take your seats myself and your other teachers will be washing your feet silence flickering from amused to unnerved sertonio and mrs. love the mayo appeared smiling solemnly bearing plastic bins and pitchers as jesus washed his disciples feet so too will we wash your feet as a reminder of our need to always remain humble and willing to serve others miss calador entombed one of the retreat house aides entered and handed her a basin picking points in the circle at random the teachers started their work we made eye contact with each other grossed out and nearly laughing until i saw cj's expression across the room sertonio and miss calador were closing in on either side of her as they neared her face grew more alert she was trying not to look at sertonio bent over cat's feet oblivious to the way cat made an exaggerated gagging face cj's body shifted away her unease radiated to where i watched useless inert she swallowed and my own throat tightened my mind closed on the word please when her eyes met mine i wanted to look away but couldn't all my guilt simmering pinning me in place if she's so scared of him maybe it was her picture after all the spell broke miss calador reached her first cj's body uncoiled nothing too obvious just her shoulders something so that she looked again like the slob everyone accused her of being two bodies away sertonio had reached tisha from this angle i could only see the back of his head but he looked up at her for longer than he did other students tisha glanced down at him smiling her smile of perfection but she didn't let it last she lifted her head as he dropped his and scanned the room for someone to charm i stopped observing before she could catch me luckily mrs. love the nail knelt before me then and in her motherly voice said hello rachel hi mom i answered smiling with effort mrs. love the mayo gestured i held up my right foot allowing her to pour water over it my toes curled from the cold the teachers weren't using soap so it wasn't like we were really getting clean the water in her basin was a color of weak coffee and made me feel sick we were inseparable in second grade mama always told me that but of course i remember too i don't know why you and cj and tisha aren't friends anymore she would say what happened to you girls it bothered me how easily she could bring it up i missed their friendship too but i was tired of feeling sorry for myself besides how could i explain all that had happened in the six years since how in fourth grade we all went to different sections and things started to change so quickly it was hard to tell what was going on we missed eating together for a week because of various things then tisha started having lunch with some other girls in her section and cj got so moody i suddenly didn't want to hang out with her how that was the start and end of it how could i tell mom that leticia tan had become one of our batch heartthrobs growing taller and slimmer in the span of one summer how in seventh grade she started dating a high schooler from the south which cemented her reputation as one of the most formidable girls in our batch she was in part of the main popular girl barcada but had her own posse her fierce bluntness was sometimes cruel but it was difficult to hate her not only because she was pretty it was widely known that she was smart that she regularly got honors we did not have a friendship confrontation when things started crumbling in fourth grade after that year we simply didn't speak it was like our whole history as childhood friends didn't matter and it didn't not really the loss barred from my mind except in those rare moments when we would pass each other in the hall and i'd think you trader we once role played pokemon together for a whole summer how could you forget that i was squirtle cj was bulbous our tisha was charmander and i'll stop there thank you isabel okay i'm going to spotlight everybody and we can have a few questions we don't want to keep too late danie's probably falling asleep already does anyone have questions for our amazing authors that was so great i know there's hands out there and there's lots of love in the chat and lots of viewers on youtube tonight so thank you youtube viewers just do you do any of you have questions for each other it i'll start is that it was that a true story jen because that was super scary yeah i know everything about it was true even that part about watching like a discovery channel show on paranormal activity right before i mean that's the kind of thing if it was fiction you'd have to edit it out because it's just like too much but it was really happening so yes i was going to ask isabel those poems that you read are they are they in a collection somewhere or somewhere that no no i'd love to make a poetry collection one day but i have real hard time with poetry i'm not good about submitting it either so no i hope you do and then boy i have a question about what it's like to be pin i in kentucky but that's probably a much bigger question than for right now so i'll just table that for later yeah it's wait there are some of us and when we find each other i feel like it's really exciting like oh my gosh another Filipino kentucky and it's you you know so um but i feel like i'm i'm meeting more maybe i'm like putting it out there and then we're like gravitating towards each other i don't know um but it's it feels good when we find each other and um and i also feel like you know uh we kind of have to sort of expand our our identities in that way just because there are so few of us that like you know there's more um like uh one of my trying to say i'm very tired right now but um you know just finding other asian americans in kentucky is also a very rare thing and so being able to like have that community is it's really nice uh i'm curious what what has been helping people with their writing practice or even just their reading practice this year um i realized this week that's i suddenly felt it's hard for me to wake up and i was like oh no that means like the cold is coming in but that means my morning time is is down because that's when i write so i'm just curious if people have found things that have been helpful this year uh sabelle i wish i had an answer for you because i'm also having a really hard time um you know i thought i had a complete manuscript and the only thing that survived from like 70 pages of poems was that one poem that uh you know that i just read and i thought oh i guess i guess i start here right and so i've been kind of holding on to that idea that like everything that i wrote prior to that was just exercise to get to that one poem but it's like 70 pages jesus so you know maybe it's that right like right now is the time to be kind of just exercising you know so yeah how about you folks what are you is it hard to write right now or gen you just had this massive deadline um for your manuscript so what are you doing now in terms of being able to write oh oh i'm just i'm this is now my time where i'm like i'm gonna i'm just gonna read other people's things and honestly you know when i was trying to finish the book when i would get to these points where i was like i can't write anymore right now i would just read and and and and that was okay for me like that actually really fed my process so um yeah and now i'm gonna read all your three books are now on my list and so i'm just looking forward to being in this stage of learning and absorbing you think we you know i think it's always good to balance output with resourcing and i'm not a routine person i don't do writing routines at all yeah any do you have an answer to that question um well i just uh was like in charge of put together and ran the kentucky state poetry society conference this past weekend so i feel like i'm still like worn out from that but it was also very like rejuvenating to like hear all these readings and then also go to generative workshops i feel like that is when i'm really stuck that's like a thing that kind of kicks my butt and makes me do the writing sit down like writing with other people or having prompts or having you know an audience i took uh barba jane's uh workshop this summer this past summer was that the summer yeah and it was it was generative and it was i mean i i feel like i learned a lot and i actually writing for the first time in a long time so it was it feels really good to do things like that so what i'm hearing is just being in community and reading other people it's just so important for the writer and i thank you all for being here we do have everybody's book except jens is still on order so we'll be hopefully getting that soon and then hopefully her new book and of course you can get those all with your san francisco public library card and library community we love you we appreciate you and authors we appreciate you for sharing all of your amazingness with us and everyone have a wonderful night and thank you for joining us thank you thank you so much thank you everyone wonderful to hear all of your voices yeah i wish i could get you to sign my book barba jane sometimes soon all right get to see oh my gosh to get your book signed let me know we can set up something at the library sounds great