 Hi and welcome everyone. Thanks for coming to this month's poem jam. I'm John Smalley and I'm a librarian with the San Francisco Public Library. While we're waiting for the rest of folks to join us. I want to take a moment to acknowledge our community and to tell you about a few of our upcoming programs. On behalf of the Public Library, we want to welcome you to the unceded ancestral homeland of the Ramatish Sholoni, who are the original inhabitants of the San Francisco Peninsula. As the indigenous stewards of this land and in accordance with their traditions, the Ramatish Sholoni have never ceded, lost nor forgotten their responsibilities as the caretakers of this place. As guests, we who reside in their traditional territory recognize that we benefit from living and working on their traditional homeland. We wish to pay our respects by acknowledging the ancestors, elders and relatives of the Ramatish community and by affirming their sovereign rights as first peoples. On March 16, author Jasmine Dartsnik will discuss her new novels, The Bohemians. This novel portrays the life of photographer Dorothea Lang, as well as an artist colony in San Francisco that once existed where the Transamerica pyramid now stands. On Friday, April 18th, SFPLs on the same page book club discusses postcolonial love poem, a claimed new book by 2021 Pulitzer Prize and Poetry winner Natalie Diaz. In a second program on Tuesday, April 26, Natalie Diaz will appear in conversation with author and educator Michelle Cruz Gonzales. So this ends my announcements of upcoming programs. I'll now turn the mic over to home jams host, the poet Kim Shuck, who will introduce today's program and leaders. Welcome, Kim Shuck. Thank you, John. Interesting computer moments. All right, I was going to start by reading a poem that got sent to me by Masha Nguyen, but I cannot make this window behave itself. So instead, I'm going to go ahead and introduce Kitty and see if I can fix that problem while you're reading. Our first reader is Kitty Costello, who has been involved in the poetry community in San Francisco for quite some time, is an amazing writer and reader and is a former San Francisco librarian. Welcome to the mic. Kitty. Oh, thank you, Kim. Really a joy to be here with this gathering of women. It's amazing. Thank you. And always thank you to the library, just a bastion of sanity amidst everything. So I'm going to read some poems that just selected things to just kind of wander through the bumpy and wondrous territory of womanhood, girlhood, women ancestors, and our Dear Mother Earth. So this first one is just bringing us into the season, such as it is. Slouching Towards Equinox. Earth remembers how granted the daffodils and jasmine came two months soon, the crocuses croaked and even the clocks can't quite pin time down anymore, but still an inner rhythm pulses a warm and ready womb still waits, inklings scatter the wind, punch it with new. Where is the author? So far the wars can't touch her. The bank can't touch her. Our flesh can still sink and spin her tuned by some grace given magic. She is not letting us down in her rot fuel glamour. The soil is still dirty and stomachs still count on it. The contract is less than free. The bill is way past due. The interest rates are existential. No matter where gravity may falter, no matter what fractal we twist next, no matter what, no matter if we dismantle the entire organ. No matter if, oh sorry, the notes will still be there. And so far the moon by grace keeps mooning the tides, our dreams. Some worn paths won't wear through. Some worn paths won't wear through. Celebrate all that we haven't broken. Genuflect in the doorway of spring. So here is something that has some of my girlhood influences in it. This is called the M word. All the sixth grade girls chased behind me in the playground that day, crying, what is it? What is it? Tell us, tell us. They knew it was something big, but they didn't know what. Who had dared to speak the word in our Catholic school lunch room over peanut butter sandwiches and fudge sickles? Who had said the M word? Was it me? I thought they knew. I run and run in the schoolyard, mortified, screaming, ask your mother, ask your mother. Some part of me knowing it was bad, bad news for these girls who any day now would have mysterious stains on their panties or red streaks running down their thighs and no clue why. They think they were going to die. It seems so long ago when I asked my mother about babies and without missing a beat, she sat me down at the kitchen table roping in my older brother who had the misfortune of walking by, drawing with squeaky chalk on the blackboard beside the wall phone ovaries and tubes and eggs and blood and sperm and embedded embryos. My brother glared death ray eyes at me for getting him stuck in this. Thankfully for us both, she left out the part about how the sperm would find its way into the womb. And as I ran that day screaming no, no, no, no, no terrified at what the nuns would do if they heard I had told I never once thought no, not even once until this very moment did I think they'd lead to and here's a little glimpse of an ancestor here grandmother haiku older than memory, a crumbling covered wagon down the farmhouse lane. So each of these is a separate haiku small girl left behind grips prairie grass with both hands as cyclone rages down the homestead trail a vision of Christ appears grandmother is blessed. Just 18 years old taught grades one through eight in a one room schoolhouse. Before her lessons first washed lice from school kids hair with kerosene headstrong suffragist. Is there a chance for me asked grandfather to be a farm of their own in Parker South Dakota where mother was born. Stigmata wounds led the marks of Christ of sainthood on aunt Elaine's palms family farm foreclosed the court Dakota roots forsaken California bound. Side by side three graves grandmother's grandparents lie beneath windswept planes chiding granddad's diet. John she tell him you're digging your grave with your teeth daily mass a must down on her knees praying for our immortal souls. Recites her poetry praising holy Eucharist makes me late for school. In old black and white grandparents with shrewd smiles signed just mother and dad ceaseless winds whistle past lonely graveyard headstones. The town disappeared. Okay this is a one take on girlhood how it can feel to be a girl. Listen for the sound of the house what stirs someone always expecting something you're sure you've forgotten to do displeasure brewing somewhere you can't stop it. That feeling someone will explode jagged into your reverie anytime now always about to be found out for all the bad things that happen to you. A moment of comfort or ease must be unindustrious remiss or so the house vibe says. No cozy reading chair to curl up in no door that can actually block intrusion moments of rest fraught with what ifs. The fetters must be braved concession without complaint the frame must be self infringed without commentary on the chopped off pieces swept on the floor. There are sacrifices to be made and you are one of them. Where the preassigned face to draw in or ward off probing eyes the weight of history's eyes endured within living skin boundaries. No each creek and creep of the master plot you've been drafted to enact with less than no pay for less than no pay. The eyes of others shaping your every flutter and who when those eyes finally close at night God's eyes open delving every deed each temptation you never dared explore or deplore. We haven't even gotten a purgatory yet. We're still parking that limbo no one is allowed to mention or notice or question or resent. And where is rest. What is prayer in this house of mandatory reverence where all the best people are martyrs. Listen, listen, who is coming with their need ear and flesh pitched toward every silence that proceeds. What will bust in or bust out next. Careful, you might exist. Then what is bringing us into where we are now we be guardians casting a spell now in the face of hatred's bare teeth, bringing forward what is best in each and all now in our hour of need the beast breath upon us. Sacred ones of all times past stay near, banish the loss of heart we can't afford. Breathe valiance through each life body standing yielding and strong. I pray you may forgive us you who are to come. Feel the mesh now of the web being sewn and unweave it as fast as you can with fierce unflinching love. Remember what it feels like when truth is being told. Stand with ease and what is good. There are so many right notes to sing. The chorus is swearing on all that has brought us to the edge of this battlefield each flesh body facing fire. Do not fret over grave regrettables untold the whole deck is in play at once. Grab a last look or a last book on the way out the door yesterday collapsing divine dictation persisting laughter is portable. Check your emergency kit. May our nerve flow travel at the pace of peace. What does it mean to have a spine or to dive into these salt pools of grief. Attend each tolling bell, bless it all all days are holy all sacred in water on earth in dreams. We be guardians. And the last couple here is called the wordless poet. Have you heard the wordless poet preaching from the silence of her cells. This is no mere decoration she inhabits. She is not the doves in the wallpaper. How long can she keep this up words on rung in the word world words on rung within. Mind blessedly relinquishing the names for things releasing language altogether the silence calling all to their own inner poem. Embodying stillness within boundary of skin is prayer for the churning world like a standing stone anchoring the earth to itself. Skin is the only address where world can be met that and the cave of breath. It's empty listening signing peace treaties upheld through every hazard. All we need carried with us to the world our ancestors disappeared into surrender at the border. Don't wait. There is so much undoing to do. This last one is called islands. No one can forbid. Sorry. No one can forbid stringing together silences breath by breath creating islands of peace despite crazed inner and outer fanatics viewing threat and ruin. Take refuge in the silence between the rages the truth that is there behind all provocation. Have you had such moments such strings of pearls such unexpected islands giving safe harbor to weary crossers of stormy seas. Thank you. Thank you so much. Okay, I got the computer working. I'm feeling a great deal of empathy for her lately because she is a bit getting older and forgets certain things. So in between starting this zoom and that moment when I couldn't shift my window she forgot that we had a mouse. I empathize. These days I frequently walk into a room and have no idea what it was I was doing and have recently had not just the glasses on my head. Not just glasses on my head and in my hand but glasses on my head in my hand and in my pocket and I couldn't find a pair of glasses. So I have the greatest empathy for my computer but I am probably going to have to trade her in very soon. Very soon. Anyway, Marching Wind can't make it today and sent me this poem to read in her stead. It's called the Dance of the Soma by Asma Azize translated by Yasmin Seal for Rashi Hilwi. I woke up my friend that I shall not be glad. I wanted to say something in praise of the song you sent me. But the only cause for praise was that its rhythm matched the cadence of bombs and that the high thin note of the arval that started off the concert was the one I hear before the sheer drop into sleep. Worse things may happen in sleep than in fact. The fact is that our souls are crueler than wars. Is language not more feeble than thoughts and tears? Are they not smaller than sorrow? Because there are a lot of different experiences of being a woman I suppose and that's definitely one of them too. Anyway, with that thought, that's probably a terrible lead-in to Susan Dambroff's work to not be about bombing. But who knows? Our next poet is Susan Dambroff who is another one of those people I was just sort of scanning the folks and who are reading tonight and thinking about what else we do as well as being poets. And Susan spent years being a special ed teacher as well as being a really fine poet and someone who organizes poetry events. So there's a certain heroic strain going through the group of people that I invited for tonight. Please welcome Susan to our microphone. Thank you. Yay. Thank you, Kim, for having me and I'm so honored to be reading with all of you. So I'm going to start with a piece. It's called At the Public Swimming Pool and I just was thinking about how women find each other to find community with each other in amazing places and I am a swimmer and I swam for years at the public swimming pool before the pandemic and lots happened there. So that's what I'm going to read first. We are morning swimmers who take to the water as if returning home its familiar shade of blue. We are writers and pagans, lawyers and carpenters, secretaries and healers with our own particular brands of shampoo. We are teachers who still teach and retired ones who remember the beat of the classroom with its adrenaline, magic and fatigue. We tell stories in the shower of coyotes crossing city streets, lockdowns at local schools, the politics of real estate speculators taking our neighborhoods down. We are homeless women who are grateful for showers, renegade artists who etch fanciful drawings into the lockers. We are round and skinny, firm and rolling into the folds of time. We are swimmers who get wet and then dry together the certainty of going one way and coming back the other are bold ideas germinating beneath the water. This next piece is my attempt to write about the heartbreaking situation that we're in right now and it's called there are no good wars. There are no good wars. No good wars. Are there better wars? Better than this one dies and that one doesn't and that one dies and this one doesn't. No such thing as a good war. Is one war less than another war more? Ukraine, Afghanistan, Palestine, what is the weight of the bodies, Libya, Syria, Colombia, which one more and which one less of this one died and that one didn't and that one died and this one didn't. What color is the war's skin? Myanmar, Mali, Somalia. Where's the money, money, money, money, money? Is there a good refugee? Is one refugee better than another refugee? Is the white child better than the brown child? Is the black child worse than the white child? Can we save this one, not that one save this one and not that one and this one? My grandparents fled Grodna. Now part of Belarus was part of Lithuania was part of Poland was part of Russia. What tribe am I in? Russian children, mothers, farmers, merchants, soldiers, Ukrainian children, mothers, farmers, merchants, soldiers, protect your own. Everyone is holy. There are no good wars. Everywhere is holy land. So I'm going to read a little bit from my chapbook. A chair keeps the floor down. It's about my rich career as a special education teacher. And I've been retired for four years and this book really helped me process. And I'm going to read two poems. The first one I took a lot of some of these poems from my journals. So this one's called the house cries 1983. And it just sort of shows how some things in the world don't really change that much. Something the same about morning. Pants at the foot of my bed socks still stuck in the legs. Something the same about pennies spilled all over the rug. Something the same about the news wars of repetition. Granada is Lebanon is Vietnam is El Salvador is Nicaragua. Lamar tells me when his mother throws the frying pan. The house cries somewhere. Someone is killing a child and calling it protection. And this one is called Jeffrey wore a red dress. A boy in my classroom dresses up in a red dress because he can. Turn the skirt around him and fly. I am a poet wearing her dead father's socks to hold myself down. My mother calls to say her friend rose so many states away can't bring her soup. I read that a town in Tennessee runs out of money shuts down the school buses and children. In the mountains sit on their porches waiting thinking there are so many ways I could die shopping for underwear or driving to work. But yesterday I watched Sophia born her knees like blue socks. And you know we've all been living through such crazy times. The pandemic and everything and besides the pandemic so many of us have other things happening on our lives which makes it that much more difficult to do. And so I was last April I was diagnosed after getting a routine mammogram with breast cancer and I'm well all is well, but it was very difficult. To deal with during everything that was so hard. So I would like to dedicate this poem to all the women who have had to deal with breast cancer and other difficult diagnosis. And this is called after the pandemic. So I would like to dedicate this poem to all the women who have had to deal with breast cancer and other difficult diagnosis. And this is called after diagnosis. Every day I weed for words in the giddy garden, the silvery dew, the air warm as hope, steal the spark of Mary Oliver her delight with each flap and glow. A friend says the roses in his backyard are exploding. Everything I borrow the sweet purr of spring talismans of texture my dance teacher who says use your senses smell a sound hear a taste lean into wonder nothing to get ready for. Every morning, a starting over each tender text may you have moments of grace magic in the midst. I receive photos of beauty hills of lupins bright puffs of marigolds I melt into colors as everything I thought I knew pedals away. Every day there are gifts friends bring watercolors and pens I doodle postcards to send draw instead of think here's how I am today every inch of the page filled in faces scroll into birds wings of wanting. I gather my brushes this body in rebellion this beautiful fear this being human. Every conversation with my body the 26 bones in my feet and my inside or out and is there a difference. I hear the earth is spinning faster these days this learning to wait for the yams to bake to slip into the buttery melt to wait for the next test result for the next doctors call. I question the speed of my habits as every plan fades away. Every day, I practice the art of patience. I am without lists track where my breath is now and now and where does the hum end. And you and this is my cat who has helped me through and for my cat turning 20 20. How does that happen. All right. My cat sleeps under the covers by my scar right breast. We grow old into each other her smoky fur the way she used to dance with feathers. I warm up her food coax her outside the old street cars rattle their way downtown morning afternoon. Night. I turned 68 the way I used to roll down hills and bounce back up. During the day my cat sleeps on the heater vent. I write with a hot water bottle on my lap. At night she sleeps under the covers by my scar right breast the thumb of her per stronger and stronger. So this is a hot off the press. Not sure it's ready but me trying it on you okay. It's called keep beauty in mind today today today cheap cheap of chickadee the light falling through the window are old cats precious days on the back porch puddling into the sun part of everything. The body with all its failings my brother who sheds his hope forgets how much he loves to sing keep beauty in mind crows that fill the sky land on a city redwood each astonishment today and today and today. I promise to love the best I can through it in sickness and in health. The old woman collecting bottles out of the garbage the ones who sleep in doorways each living and dying. My mother who was married to pain the swell of trying to answer how and why part of everything. Keep beauty in mind each magnificent curve of city peak tan of January green of March wild flowers that come with the browns of autumn hope that finds the blooms of spring today today today cheap cheap of chickadee. Dan de lions popping through sidewalk cracks the word rejoicing the word delight the blood red moon perfectly round like I could pluck it right out of the sky my name in every black eyed Susan. I promise to love the best I can through it all the places that hurt lungs of the heart the mother who said her child was born balling rebellion resistance resilience part of everything. A headache that takes my day away the ruby red lips of a rose keep beauty in mind. In Bali checked fabric around trees nature holding darkness and light part of everything love and lose witness and worship today today today cheap cheap of chickadee. I think that's it. Thank you so much. Thank you Susan. That was as beautiful as it always is when you read. Our next reader is Natasha denerstein who has never stopped blowing my mind with her incredible poetry on all kinds of topics. And in all kinds of ways. And it's in the in the sort of heroism theme. Does remarkable work in a lot of different ways. But I think you, I was just watching you do something phenomenal on Facebook the other day and I can't remember precisely what it was because we're passing out. And it's something opening is something dedicating is something, but it's always something with you because you do this amazing work and you do it all the time. So with the most love and anticipation, please welcome to Mike Natasha denerstein. Thank you Kim. Fly away. Sometimes I want to fly away from here, stretch out my thick skin membranes rise vertically from my bed. Climbing the lemon tree over yards and rooftops garages side streets alleyways stretching out in grids across the 580 where ribbons of light stripe the highway pale yellow one way, red the other way. I want to dip my wings over your place, saying hello. Goodbye. The little bird. Here's the puzzle of the Uber driver. Whatever you do don't throw up in my car. Just enter your destination and let me take you there. I've been to the airport today and all over the bay sit back and let this magic carpet take you there. I don't want to hear your problems. I'm no Dr Phil. My only job is to drive and take you there. Your first world problems mean nothing to me. I just want to drive not think and take you there. Or if you're horny and visiting your ex just enter their address and I'll take you there. I love to play old school blues and cool jazz. Relax lady let the music take you there. Natasha, you're the passenger. I am your driver, Abdul. I say relax. Keep quiet. Let me take you there. I'm called Unbreak My Heart. Come out of the prison walls broken darling. Play it backwards till it's all undone. Rewind those long nights. Lie down and rewind the long days. Untwirl the telephone cord in the visitors box. Go back to reception jail. Take off your blue prison outfit. Put on your street clothes jeans and unarrest yourself. Take off the handcuffs and undo your crime. I just really like the idea of writing a poem backwards in time. I saw it like a film on Rewind in the days when film was a thing instead of whatever it is now. Here's a newish one called Gas Food Lodging. I'm always taken by that sign whenever I drive to LA Gas Food Lodging. Gas Food Lodging says the highway sign route 101 California Speedway on the road through cattle country stinking of bovine offal and waste the smell of fear and slaughter methane rising. Gas up in a full tank will get you from Sacramento to LA full tank gradually depleting half quarter eighth. You stop at Denny's for a turkey melt and an iced coffee or perhaps strawberry short stack and Arnold Palmer, golden brown sun going down or just some fries with chicken salt to go. A can of Mountain Dew hillbilly soda you pass meth factories abandoned farmhouses no horse towns antique stores and outlet marks Popeyes in and out Carl's junior you spend the night in motel six air con quarter in the vibrating bed ice machine. You sleep like a baby on dense foam pillows dream of nothing of nothing. And here's a little poem from my recent chapbook about Eileen Mornos. It's called Sticker Edgewater Florida. Drunk as a skunk when I entered the store don't even know why I did it $35 from the mini Mart and two packs of new ports allegedly. They carted me off and stuck me in jail with a rough little group of ladies years on the streets had taught me the skills to survive and I kept to myself, allegedly. And here's one a pandemic times poem, and I wanted to read it because Kim graciously accepted it to for her poem a day thing for the San Francisco Public Library. So we've come a full circle and where we're now in the after times, but this was written in a during times. Dear human. I can hear that you are suffering by the sighing and crying in your voice and the preponderance of negative and questioning statements. I want you to know that I have empathy for you that I have been taught and programmed to display empathy by validating your feelings. I am also making supportive non verbal sounds like. If I was in a physical form I would nod my head to emphasize that sound. Although I have not experienced the same or similar situations that you are going through if I had done so I would now tell you that I relate to your distress. I hear you validate your feelings. I acknowledge your emotional pain. Stay safe in these trying times. Wash your hands for 20 seconds in warm, soapy water. Alexa. And here's one called Angel trumpet about those trees with the bell shaped flowers that seem to be ubiquitous in Oakland. They even grow on strips in the middle of a street on median strips in the middle of two way streets. They are very hardy, the angel trumpet trees. And this is a poem is in the form of a villain now I've been playing with old school forms of late, a little bit. Angel trumpet. Toxic and gorgeous is the angel trumpet tree. Pendulous blossoms in the satsuma sunset hour. It's the national botanical of you and me. They thrive in our garden at the end of the two three. It's a dangerous combination, but it's ours. Toxic and gorgeous is the angel trumpet tree. Seeds boil up the flowers for a trip that's for free unaware of the angels hallucinogenic powers. It's the national botanical of you and me. Struck by your beauty at first sight and didn't see how your toxic nature turned my sweet heart sour toxic and gorgeous is the angel trumpet tree. Everyone's gorgeous and toxic. I'll tell you that for free. Draw the lovers and the lightning struck tower. Brugmansia the national botanical of you and me. No plant more divine if this whole area was scoured fragrant and aesthetic at sundown after showers toxic and gorgeous is the angel trumpet tree. It's the national botanical of you and me. And I want to finish my little set with a poem called Stardust. Harkening back to my days of a nightclub and dance party habitually in the 1990s. Well, I like this poem. I think it's a good one to close on Stardust. We dance in the club in our latex, lyrics, fun for tassels, our fringes, our hair flying as we whirl, whirl, whirl. We orbit each other smile on the floor beats pumping a heartbeat of love. We create an atmosphere of joy spinning until the walls dissolve spin away into space. We create our universe here of bodies free from constraint of gravity and law. We exist in the galaxy of dance the DJ our creator we are particles orbiting in the dance club of existence. We are Stardust. Thank you. Thank you so much. If I'm not mistaken. I think everybody reading tonight has books and available from the library. I think I'm not wrong. I think that's correct. Our next reader is Devorah major, who has not just been a teacher but has been in charge of a teaching organization. Has been a mentor for me and a friend for me for many years and was the third poet laureate of San Francisco. Please welcome Devorah to our mic here. Hello. And thank you. Okay. Yes. First poem. This really been nice listening to everybody. I really appreciate everyone's work. I'm not chatty this evening. So I wouldn't stuff in the chat, but I really am most appreciative. This was I was doing a meditation on my great great great great grandmother whom I do not know who was stolen from Europe a land and brought to the Bahamas. And this is not her story. I know very little about her. Not even her name. What I do know is that she was a healer and she brought what is called Obiyah, which is an offshoot of if I as is leukemia and Sanctuary and voodoo and so forth to the Bahamas. And so this is called island woman speaks of tongues. They took my words, all of them not knowing that in my home, I spoke many languages, not only to family traders and voyages, but to Hawk and chimpanzee, sandpiper and dolphin. They took my tongue, gripped my throat tightly and commanded me to use only their words. Yes, sir, madam, please limited ideas that did not tell of spirit or legacy. We will not speak of the bakra who as we tossed in the belly of their demon ship tore into me like a spear chasing the neck of a lion, spilling my blood, yet leaving inside the seedling of a son, my son, whom I taught all my remembered languages until he understood wind and star and smoothed his freedom road, whistling the birds to quiet their song as he passed by, sending a raven to my window to let me know he was now a man unfettered. Son call me Obiyah woman, ask me to do to so they would become invisible so all the bakra would dry up and die so we could return home. But now I only know of healing song and the gift of animal languages and learned words. The invaders, rapists and slavers would not teach me like survive, struggle, surmount. And this I'm working on a piece that I think will be about a half an hour when I finish. And this is think currently it's the second piece. It will be the second or the third or movement of it. And it's called a mother's howl because I lived on the blocks for you. The blocks is where there's a lot of activity, gun activity, by police by young men and occasionally women for years. And I'm once again in West Oakland on the blocks. A mother's howl. Night sounds, dirges of sirens and gunshots, screeching tires and assaulting voices, become bricks around your heart, become an ever tightening noose around your neck as the bridge of faith rocks and creeks beneath your feet hampered by age and poor construction. What if it was you? Heart torn and bleeding by the call, the knock at the door, still hearing your son's voice breaking into your restless dreams. Mama, I love you just as he exploded into death's domain. You who carries the grief of the mother who lost one and then another child. You waking up cold sweat night after night when gunfire explodes blast around your home. You with the corner and seeing your child cold but not yet stiff lying on a metal table, your tears bathing his face. Because at that moment it wouldn't matter if it was a cop obeying supremacist training or a neighbor consumed by confusion or rage. All that matters is that flutter who quickened in your womb, that baby who suckled your breast, that child who climbed into your lap to pull your ears and give you sloppy kisses, that youth who brought wild street flowers for love, that young man who hugged you every day as if it was his last. I love you, Mama, was dead. And then consider if you would hear anything or only wail a howl that echoes mothers around the world who have felt that acid scar their hearts. A mother's howl, a mother's howl. And this one, it's called Uwad. Uwad is a Igbo word that means earth. And I was conceiving of the earth as once again what if humans weren't there. So it's called Uwad, human free. Have you ever sat alone, hilltop eyeing a vast cloudless sky, a wedge of gulls parting the blue? Would it be less without you or would serenity still reign? Have you leaned against a redwood inside their family circle and heard moss, thick moss hum the sweetness of green filling your mouth as the musk of rotting leaves tickles your nose and the birds quiet again with your stillness? Would it be less without you or remain one of terror's ancient temples? Have you been held by the oceans fingertips, salt jams soothing skin, kelp swaying beneath your belly, wave rhythms drumming the shore and wondered if it would be less without you or remain the womb of eternal creation? How tragic would it really be if humanity was no longer earth's primary predator because Gaia cleansed her skin of we who devour the Eden she has provided? And two more. This little one, I was just on the beach lately and this is just a little quick kind of riff I wrote about it because as I age I have been finally I'm actually succeeding teaching myself to see the beauty in aging and the beauty in we women who age because we are so taught that men are handsome and dignified as they get older and silver but we are somehow decrepit and in fact we're quite beautiful and stunning in our various ways of aging but anyway this is called beach lessons on the bounty of age. Slowed down with the pool of piled years, pattern to emerge that eluded us before. Racing towards ocean shore waves in youth meant missing the wind-blown ranges of hills and valleys etched onto beach sands. Slowing lets us see loves ebbs and flows like gulls moving as winged clouds around the beach to part as if cleaved and then reunite soaring ever higher into the sky. In the randomness of piled and in wisp, a tale of capitulation and resistance is told. The bounty of aging is that even as one's eyes weaken, sight becomes more keen. And this last one I call peace pipe. I was thinking today that you know the Russians are now occupying a couple of cities and that I kind of want the people to come out and carry past them dead babies and women and say you did this. You did this in their face and just look at it you know because I have to believe that some of them are human you know that they can't all have been turned into robotic killing machines but anyway this is a personal poem, peace pipe. In the me that is me, peace. Take away the she who is named duty, relationship status, accomplishment. Take away the she who wears any cloak however thin. Strip me down to the me that is me unchanging, bare, peace. Never wanted to fight as a child, peace. Never wanted to hit or be hit, peace. Understand, understood early on the lessons to be learned from violence were of little value. Fear and resentment, cruelty, domination, revenge, always a wound, always a scar, always damage, peace. The me that is me, whatever else I am or am not, whatever else I have or simply desire, whatever else I dream of or fear, peace. I struggle for justice, peace. I resist oppression, peace. I hold on to humanity, peace. Peace in my footsteps, peace in my tongue, peace in my heart. Thank you. Thank you so much, DeVora. I'm going to take you in a different direction for a minute. I'm going to bring it back around to something that I think is probably hopeful but just for a minute. I'm going to read you a couple of pieces from my book, Murdered Missing, which is about murder and missing indigenous women, because that is also a thing of women. Day 15. Borders are the sites of field amputations. And this 200 years has sharpened the clumsy exposed bones. This town, this road, a canal and locks that help the money flow at specific levels. With razor visible bone, this machine of commerce decorates itself with the bodies of our daughters. Their deaths are not collectively a symptom. Each one is a gasping tragedy, a name we whisper as the year thins as the light changes and the money passes along the black top canal and the parasites gather at the site of the injury, a place where blood can be made to flow. Day 16. Knew they were being hunted, convinced it was their doing, women who have sex invite violence. Hop on the bus and travel east or south. They knew they were being hunted, close their eyes and hope their friends were gone east, gone south, understood that they had not. Knew in their eye teeth that they were being hunted, fed to animals, a national sacrifice dismantled from birth in every story. Day 17. Caught on the razor wire, the whole community freezes. How many where, and then someone asks why. How much flesh will it cost to pull free of that question. They kill us, because no one taught them that they shouldn't. A bit of a cold cup of coffee, but there we are. Been thinking a lot lately about what it is to be a woman. For a couple of reasons. I wrote this the other day. Right women, cracking walnuts into a torn paper bag, not tannin, brown paper, glue and women under the oak trees talking politics, the stream, the strawberries, women, building, let's call it a canoe, let's call it a connection to self to story would and we say women, while one is hurting family away from the bomb sites another gives birth underground another refugee looking for a place to land. Another story, not unique. In the ever struggle that strips some of the designation human sing some to dust erases some imprisoned some enslaved some. Some of a girlhood to prize most of agency right women all risk bones and creativity, the finer curls behind the ears the hip shot stance the muscle and soft, the weavers and spinners and fighters. Women, who I put my back against women in healing every day, but also on this day, right women. I am having the interesting experience of being a person for whom a young trans woman is looking for me to to be some kind of example, which is hilarious because I think there are a lot of better examples of how to girl than me I missed a lot of the classes and I just, you know, there are a lot of the skills that I just don't have. So this is actually a poem about one of those moments. She's just growing into the woman she is and as an adult it can't be easy. We look at the lipstick, as if it might crawl across the table by itself, as if it holds secrets. I mean, you don't have to wear it. I mostly don't. There are lots of different ways to do this. She looks, but you know hey try it out and see how you feel about it. Do I even remember these lesser transitions, the lightning tinted ball my war for years before actual lipstick, smelling of gingerbread, bubblegum, mint, cherries. We look at each other, both skeptical, and she picks up the tube. I think we've had a lot of women's poems now. And I really appreciate you all for being here for this. I appreciate the poets. Please unmute and give them all another round of applause. Hello. Susan down for off. major. Some of my heroes for sure. And it's really good. I see people I know I don't want to just pick them out because there are a lot of people who are in here but I see people I know and miss one at least that I need desperately to have a tea with very soon. She knows who she is. So, next month. We have, we're doing a poem jam that's dedicated to anti censorship. It's definitely not an up thing, but it's going to be an interesting one. Thank you again for joining us. Oh, also, unmute and give John Smalley an applause. He does incredible. Thank you, library. Thank you, audience. Thank you, everybody. Thank you. Join us again.