 Good afternoon everyone. Good afternoon. Okay, this is Anya. We're going to get started. So great to see everybody here today and so excited to be celebrating Local Color, the right now SF Bay anthology. And here everybody read today. I'm Shauna Sherman, I'm manager of the African American Center. We're here at the main library on the third floor. And before we get started, I just want to acknowledge that the library is located in the area now known as the San Francisco Peninsula, which is on the unseeded ancestral homeland of the Ramaytushaloni peoples of the San Francisco Peninsula. As the original peoples of this land, the Ramaytushaloni have never ceded, lost, nor forgotten their responsibilities as caretakers of this place. And we recognize that we benefit from living, working, and learning on their traditional homeland. 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 Ramaytush community. If you didn't already know about the African American Center, it's a space dedicated to celebrating and promoting the culture and history of African Americans. We collect books, we partner with community, host exhibits, and events like today's presentation. We're located, like I said, on the third floor of the main library. And all our books in the center are now circulating. So check it out before you leave today and take out a book. September is a sign up for a library card month. So if you're a California resident, you're eligible for a library card in San Francisco. So take advantage of the many resources a library card from here has to offer. I'm so excited to be partnering with Shizue Siegel. We've worked together for a while now. Her right now workshops have been hosted at the library on the third floor. So I'm going to bring her up. But before I do, I'm going to give a brief introduction. Shizue Siegel is a Japanese American poet, memoirist, and visual artist who was most recently published in the late in the Lake County Bloom memoir magazine and White End Zone. As founder and director of Right Now, she was recognized with the Jefferson Award for supporting over 300 writers and artists through workshops, events, and five anthologies since 2015. Her seven books includes five Right Now anthologies in Good Conscious and My First Hundred Years. Her latest project, Hidden Histories of the Central Coast, will explore intersections of agriculture, immigration, opportunity, and exploitation in San Luis Abisco County. Please welcome Shizue Siegel. All right. Thank you so much for coming. Thank you, Shawna Sherman, for hosting this event. And thank you, Kenny Avila, for doing the audio visual. The San Francisco Public Library is an amazing place. And as you may have noticed, it's sort of become a haven for a lot of folks that are feeling the stresses of either being unhoused or verging on being unhoused here in the city. And the library does an amazing job of providing a haven for them, as well as all the rest of us readers. Before the pandemic, we used to have a monthly writing workshop here once a month. It was really great to meet in person, but the pandemic has changed a lot of things, and it's eaten up a lot of our time and energy. So right now, we're currently doing our workshops virtually. So welcome to local color right now SF Bay's book party. Let's see. This year, instead of a new anthology, I'm taking a break. And instead of the perpetual pursuit of the new that the consumer society encourages us to engage in, this event is celebrating some of right now's contributors and friends who've published books in the last year or two. So check out their books at the sale table, and we'll be giving 100% of the proceeds to the authors. Before I name the readers, I'll mention that the visual art that you've been seeing running in the in the background is art by BIPOC visual artists in the Bay Area. And these images, most of these images were published in the in right now's last three anthologies. This one that's up right now is the René Yáñez, who did the Dia de los Muertos at Summarts for many years and was a leader in the Latino community in San Francisco. So reading today are André Lamont Wilson, whose book is haunting, hauntings. Avacha, who will read when she gets here. Beverly Perrino, wildflowers. The rest of the readers will be reading in this order, and I will introduce each of you so you'll know. We're going in alphabetical order by first name. So André Lamont Wilson, Avacha, Beverly Perrino, whose book is wildflowers. Bonnie Wiley Kwong, her books are The Quenching and Ravel. Dondie Dancy, who sometimes writes under the name C. Elise. Her book is Lily's Bloom Lies Fester. And then Crystal Rika Perkins and Farzanes Safavi. And then Carla Brundage, who brought three books with her today. And then Kimi Sugiyoka, Wild and Wing. Sarah Beal, co-editor of Colossus, The Colossus Body, Steve Fujimura, Sad Asian Music, Terita McKell, Synchronicity, The Oracle of Send Medicine, and a Poets in the Schools Anthology, and Young Wan Choi, Sparks Into Fire. What I love most about right now is the community that we create by sharing words. My original intention when I started right now was simply to create a multicultural community that gave voice to ordinary people and brought us together across race, class, culture, genre, educational background, and immigration status. Over time, I noticed that a large percentage of our contributors were actively working for the betterment of society. They are working hard as teachers, healers, social workers, social activists, parents, caregivers, small business people, environmentalists. They are truly inspiring people. Not only they're writing, but the way they live their lives. These days, many of us are being challenged as never before, and we have to dig deep to find the reserves to keep going. Ben, that's my phone. Can you sorry? Let's see. Many of us are being challenged as never before, and digging deep to find the reserves to keep on going in the face of a world of discouragement. Times seem hard right now, but I'm reminded that my grandparents had it even harder, and they managed to find a way to live without bitterness in harmony with nature and gratitude for everything around them. So I'm going to read excerpt from my family slaga in progress. This chapter is called The Camp After Camp. In 1952, I was six, and living with my mother and grandparents, my Ba Chan and Ji Chan had lost their farm during the incarceration. When they were released in 1945, they had no place to go but the sharecroppers camp south of San Jose, a ring of tarpaper shacks on the edge of the strawberry fields, all occupied by Japanese American families, still struggling after six years to get back on their feet. Every morning, my Ji Chan shrugged on his denim jacket and clapped a sweat stain fedora on his balbing head. He hoisted a shovel and a hoe on his shoulders and handed me a shorthandled hoe. It was just the right size for me because I was only six, but decades later, the shorthandled hoe was banned because it forced adults to bend over to chop weeds causing chronic back problems. My Ji Chan rolled himself a smoke out of bull door on tobacco and I pretend puffed clouds of steam on the frosty morning from my imaginary cigarette. Ba Chan headed to the nursery shed to propagate strawberry seedlings with her friends. We were all happy to be out in the fresh air and away from the tension-filled house. My mother and my grandmother didn't get along that well. The frosty ground crunched under my feet as I trotted beside Ji Chan. We savored the stillness as morning mist rose off the fields. Then birds in the creekside sycamores began their early morning chatter. Soon they rose in a great cloud and circled overhead before beginning their daily hunt for food. Ji Chan chuckled, Look at that! Everybody has to go to work, even the birds. In those days, strawberry camps had a lifespan of only six or seven years, a year to prepare the soil, build support systems, and set the plants. Another year of weeding and cultivating as the plants began to proliferate and flower, but the plants didn't bear much fruit until the third year. After three or four years of good production, the soil was depleted of nutrients. In those days, when land was still cheap, the whole enterprise just moved on to another parcel of land. But today's growers use the same acreage over and over, year after year. The tired soil is enriched with fertilizer and fumigated with toxic chemicals that can sear the lungs of the workers and cause developmental problems, cancer, and hormone disruption in the children. Madron's strawberry beds were shaped and planted by the workers. For months, Ji Chan and his friends used tractors to harrow and disc the hard adobe soil and supplement it with chemical fertilizers, corrugated into a pattern of ditches and raised beds. Since iron pipe was expensive in 1951, they built a whole irrigation system out of one by 12 inch redwood planks sealed with tar. First, they all worked together to construct a huge two-story open frontage shed. Then, the deftest carpenters stayed behind to fabricate the irrigation flumes. The vast shadowy work area echoed with sawing and hammering and reeked of hot tar. When we kids tried to peer inside, the carpenters warned, it's dangerous. Don't get in the way. Out in the field, Ji Chan and the rest of the men dug straight-sided channels a foot deep and 100 yards long, following the straight lines that the surveyors marked out. Then they loaded a flatbed truck with the long heavy flumes crying yoy shaw as they picked them up in unison and stacked them high on the truck and yoy shaw again as they as they lifted the flumes off the truck and laid them end-to-end in the channels they had dug. They adjusted the flumes to a barely perceptible downhill slope and sealed the seams with tar. When the first irrigation water made it to the far end of the field, they all cheered, yatta! We did it! They clapped each other on the back and mopped their sweaty brows. It took so much skill and labor to dig the ditches and lay the fumes precisely so that gravity alone could transport the water 500 feet without pumps to the farthest plants in each section. Nowadays, water is just forced through pipe by electric pumps. Meanwhile, the women nursed seedlings in the greenhouses. After the winter frost, they knelt in the ditches between the planting beds to place the seedlings. Then began the back-breaking work of weeding, a constant battle with short-handed hoe against mustard weed and grasses. Meanwhile, in the big shed, the din of hammers never stopped. After the carpenters finished building flumes, they created dozens of little wheeled carts big enough to hold flots of strawberry baskets. I earned my first dollar picking strawberries at age six. At harvest time, everybody, even the little kids like me, pushed the carts ahead of us as we walked on our knees down row after row of irrigation ditches. We plucked the shiny ripe berries by carefully cutting the stems with our thumbnails and leaving the pretty green holes intact for market. We pulled off the overripe fruit and tossed it on the ground so it wouldn't drain nutrients from the plants. By the end of the day, our lower legs were stiff with rotten strawberry mud. We snuck a few berries for ourselves, sweet and fragrant, tasting of sun, water, hard work, and community. So the next three readers will be André Lamont Wilson, Avacha, if she gets here, and then, oh, okay, cool, all right. So André Lamont Wilson, Avacha, and then Beverly Perrino, and I will introduce you all from my seat. One last thing. You may have found these handouts on your chairs. Please take them with you. They're written by contributors to Right Now, and there's information about our organization on the back. So André Lamont Wilson's chapbook, Hauntings, was awarded the Newfound Pros Prize in 2022. This debut collection of braided essays explores the racial trauma that has haunted his family for generations. André is a Black queer writer born in LA and living in the Bay Area. He manages the Small Business Development Center for Ability Now Bay Area and is a frequent contributor to Right Now. André Wilson. Thank you, Shazia Wei, for that generous introduction. In 2012, two key incidents that happened to me. One was the death of my mother, Jesse Lee Dawson Wilson, and the second was the murder of Trayvon Martin. Now with the murder of Trayvon Martin, the way that happened reminded me of different things that happened to me when I was a young Black man growing up in Los Angeles. It reminded me of different incidents, different accounts that were still happening to me today in the Bay Area. So I began to write essays about them and get them published. And as my mother, with her passing, I started to go through all of her writings, her diaries, her stories, and I kept on finding a common thread of all these stories and accounts of lynchings and murders. And I started to write and publish these pieces. Eventually, I was able to put all these books, these essays together into one collection and it won the 2022 Newfound Pro's Prize. So what I'm going to... My book is dedicated to my mother who told me lynching stories. And I'm going to do a reading tonight, this evening of the last piece that closes out my collection titled Apparition of Dreams. Mom, you never dreamed I would read your diaries after your death. But I find more comfort in your dreams than in the reality I'm living now at a time of a pandemic. If given a choice between watching the nightly news with this epidemic of bad news or reading your dream diaries, I choose to be Little Nemo in your slumberland, Alice in your wonderland, Midsummer in your night's dream. On September 28th, the day the jazz trumpeter Miles Davis died, you dreamed he was high up, wore a purple cape, and thanked you for your prayers. On February 10th, the day the root author, Alex Haley, died, you dreamed he gave you a big turkey wing and sliced you a lean ham, eliminating the fat. On one date, whose location I can't find again in a thousand pages of your diaries, you dreamed of Maya Angelo. That's all you wrote, dreamed of Maya Angelo. And on December 9th, when you gave me a copy of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, I hugged you. But on February 28th, when you saw her perform in person, you were disappointed. On June 22nd, you dreamed you rode a bus with Marlon Brando. I'm thinking, really, Mom? Which Brando? Or I'm going to make him an offer. He can't refuse. Did you speak to him? What did he say? Just as I imagine you chatting with Brando on a bus through LA, I read the end of your diary entry. Also writing your bus was Lionel Richie of the Commodores. I'm thinking, really, Mom? What the hell is Lionel Richie doing on a bus with you and Brando? Lionel sang, and a little high voice all the way home, you underlined, a poem your son wrote. What? What happened to Brando? What does your dream mean other than the world's greatest actor serving as witness to your son's poem sung by the world's greatest composer? But I find your dream extraordinary for your imagination and ambition. Sometimes, Mom, your nightmares resemble the nightmare I'm living. On November 11th, you dreamed of eggs bobbing in blood. Not good, you added. On December 10th, you dreamed of a man lying in the road. You went to help him. He motioned you to place your hand at his side. You refused. His side opened and pus flowed. You woke your heart beating fast. On December 26th, you dreamed you were in a funeral home. When the hearse arrived, you saw a dead man inside. On January 20th, you dreamed the devil delivered a bronze colored casket to your door. Sometimes, Mom, I wonder if upon your death, as you knelt and prayed on a dirty carpet before your bed, and your heart spasmed until it stopped, you realized the dream you dreamed on January 10th. You walked down a dark street. Yellow neon lights blinked and attracted you like a moth to a porch light. He came upon a motion picture show starring Cab Calloway. We splendid on a white suit suit. He sat on a throne like the king of Sweden. His wide brim fedora formed a halo around his head. A spotlight signed on him. He stood from his throne and walked through the black and white picture screen and into the movie theater in full color. His gold plated chain jangled as he jazzed his way down the steps in front of the screen. Scotton and Javon, as he sang, he sassed his way up the theater aisle. When he reached you, he did a split, rose, and offered you his hand. You took it. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Next is Avacha. She's an award-winning poet, multi-instrumentalist, and Bay Area DJ with the weekly radio shows of music, poetry, and conversation, Tuesday nights on KPFA, and Friday afternoons on KPOO. Her poetry collection, with every step I take, too, was published last year. It's an expanded edition of her original sold-out collection. She has been widely published in English and Spanish, in the USA, Mexico, and Europe. She has shared stages with leading poets and musicians, and she performs frequently with her group, Modupue. Hey, I'm so honored to be here. And, you know, I want to thank this wonderful woman who got me here because the elevator is broken. And I didn't know what to do. I was roaming around trying to find a way in here, but she brought me in here, which is the most complicated thing I've ever seen in my life. This place is a real maze. But anyway, I'm here, and I'm grateful. I'm going to read you a piece of one of the stories, the story I have in Uncommon Ground, which is over there. And I'm also going to read you a poem from my book with every step I take, too. And I have to leave at 3.30, because she said I'm a musician, and I'm with the California Jazz Conservatory this afternoon. So if you want one of mine, you have to see that handsome gentleman over there, and he'll help you out. Anyway, so from Uncommon Ground, I have a piece in there for one of my heroes, the great Linda Hill, which most people don't know about, but they should, an amazing artist. It's called Linda's House, the world of our Queen Mother, Linda Hill, First Lady of the House of Agma, the Underground Musicians Association. Pianist composer, arranger, community activist, Horace Tabscott, was an undeniably brilliant catalyst for change and an innovator of the highest order. Tabscott was an ingenious musical magnet, but Linda Hill was not only his main disciple, she was his right arm and his friend. She was always the one who was always there and the organizer behind the organization. Tabscott said she was the most talented woman he ever knew and called her Lino. I say she was an unavoidable power source and an off-the-rictor scale piano player, as a pianist. Linda was a strikingly beautiful big-boned Ashiki wearing head as bald as a baby's behind, example of African American pride. I always remember her wearing the biggest hoop earrings I had ever seen. Linda scared most folks to death, but she introduced us to the true interdependence of life. Linda was a for real Amazon, she was also a no-nonsense straight shooter and an unassuming motivator. It all began in her small apartment, her place was so full of music and big dreams that we never thought of it as just an apartment. It was the center of existence. It was our umbilical cord, home was always Lino's pad and it was in her house and her dedication, quiet brilliance, that the true glue held us all together. And believe me when I tell you, she was no ordinary glue. She was a one-of-a-kind type of sister. She was a professional nurse and a full-time mother and that background manifested itself in every move she made. Even though she was not much older than most of us and a lot younger than some of the others, she was our mama. Linda was stronger than metal and as soft as was necessary, whenever it was necessary to be soft, the woman was tough. I said she was tough. She had to be or we would have never survived because we were one strange unlikely group of characters, a whole lot of anything you wanted. We came to LA from everywhere and everything. We were high class, middle class, and a whole lot of no class. Music, the word, the dance, our art was our religion and the sacredness of our sound was our only common denominator. And that is a little bit about Linda Hill and the Underground Musician Association because the music, what do you call it, the unions were very, very racist and all across the country there were several groups. UGMA was in LA and Chicago had their, you know, theirs and Detroit Free Jazz and what have you and that was what we did. Anyway, and from this book with every step I take to which I am very proud of, this poem is in Spanglish but you'll get the message. As a musician we come home very, very late and these little tiny kids are in the middle of the street and I wrote them a love poem so that it wouldn't steal all my instruments. And it worked. Though I have to tell you this part of the story, a month after I wrote the poem because I gave all the kids who were in my corner a copy of the poem got out the board downtown San Francisco and this little cute chubby Chinese girl ran up to me through her arms and I was like, grandma! I thought she was nuts until she did this poem that I wrote that I do not remember. She knew every word of the English and Spanish and Spanglish and she did it off the top of her head and she said, thank you, nobody ever speaks to us. Nobody ever talks to us and it changed my life. I hope it just changed yours. These are children, our children. So this is for them. Black and brown children of the night I would wrap you in sunshine, I would hold you close and fold you in these arms and crests, whatever's left of the child and you with lullabies. I would like to cover every injured interview with home cooked self-esteem and better they say it's my contest. I want to fill the hole that hurt Doug. Take my hand and I'd swim defiantly through the fires I held for you and with you through the mugre of disrespect. I'm a hard-headed kind of lady and I just can't see myself given up on you. Somo lo que somo you and I y para nosotros somos todo lo que hay. We refuse together by history, por lo bonito y los sueños robados, like spiritually in the maze of our destiny. Mis negritos, mis pequeños, callejeros los necesitos. The truth is I know I need you y yo sentí so en nada. And if I had a chance I'd refuse to turn you loose to you as so in love with yourself that self-destruction would disintegrate under the pressure of your presence and you were so secure in my love for you that and so sure of the splendor you had become that even the sun would lay aside its arrogance just to get a chance to reflect the brilliance of your essence and bask in the bold truth of your integrity and ti. Viva la verdad real y yo sentí no existe ni un sendero de la esperanza. O sea, can they see you, my beautiful wild lotus flowers? If I could, I'd bathe you in a sea of rosewater. I'd convert your ways of pain into an ocean of pride and faith, y yo te pido dame un chance. Say please, please, please let me in. I promise to do the very best I can even if I have to wake the dead and conjure up our ancestors' breath. I'm not too proud to act a fool, get down on my knees and holler and scream and beg all the spirits of goodness to intervene to blow away the fog of dismay and distrust by santificatus lagrimus and dissipate the rage, burn it behind your eyes so together we could wash away the centuries of emasculating doubt and defeminize and lies and have a little fun and learn to play a brand new game called demolishing walls of self-hate. Children of the night. Mi ni nito de la caia, I want the stubbornness of my love to help you turn all the lights inside your soul, tu y tu y tu de mi sangre. I said, tu eres mi sangre. I will not allow the streets of any city to steal you. You, like a lotus blossom in the night, mis queriditas, al mig de mi estencia, I will not let the cesspool of full inga make a fast food, happy meal of your dream, chiquita la lascina, you are our only wealth, you are the most beautiful part of me and I am not about to let you go and will not permit the hungry stupidity of the greed to feed you to the streets without putting up a fight. Amor sito pedido de la noche, if I could, I would pave your path with starters and massage your mind with a steady diet of just how important you are. Make sure you know you're too damn important to let the world just throw you away. It's my job to remind you on a daily basis. This crazy old lady is here to stay. I'm still here. I say I still here staying and praying and praying and staying and praying and praying and praying and praying and praying. You let me in. It's our tomorrows that you're throwing away, queriditas, ni ni to do la casche. I'm still waiting in a stubborn old lady with a heart full of love standing in the shadows and waiting for who you could be. I say I'm waiting on who you could be waiting for you to finally see me waiting to wrap you in a blanket of sunshine. Thank you. She's away for all you do. And thank you for coming out and supporting the word. I'm going to sit over here and listen to as many as I can till 3.30. Thank you. Next is Beverly Perrino. She grew up in East San Jose and currently lives near Sacramento. Wild Fowers is her debut collection of short stories spanning several generations of Filipina and Filipina American girls and women traversing the Philippines, the Bay Area, and Ireland. Beverly earned an MA from University College Cork and an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts where she received a Linda Hull scholarship. She serves on the board of the Filipino American Writers Association, a nonprofit arts organization supporting Filipinx writers, and she's on the Executive Committee of Lit Quake. She is a freelance, grants consultant for social justice nonprofits in the Bay Area. Thank you. Hello, everyone. Good afternoon. So lovely to be here on a Sunday afternoon. Thank you, Shiz, for everything that you do. You are one of the hardest working people in the literary community. You're just always on the go and you're always busy promoting other writers. So I just really wanted to say thank you for that. So my debut short story collection, Wild Flowers, came out in May through Pawel Press, which is Filipino American Writers and Artist. Thank you. And I think I will read, it's always hard to pick what to read, but I think I'll read from the title story, Wild Flowers. And so I'll kind of start a little bit in the middle. So what you need to know is the protagonist is actually finds herself alone on Christmas. She doesn't really get along with her parents too well. They're off on a holiday cruise and she's on a break with her on and off again boyfriend. And so she decides at the very last minute to volunteer for a non-profit to visit an elderly person on Christmas to keep them company and bring them a holiday meal. So I'll start where she has already entered the elderly woman's SRO in Chinatown and the elderly woman is starting to drink the champagne, the little mini bottle of champagne that came with the meal. So this is from Wild Flowers. The old woman tipsy from the champagne began to talk freely. She shared that she had dropped out of high school in Ohio and moved to San Francisco with a friend who turned right back around and went home. But she had stayed. Through the federal arts project, she got hired to create sketches and paintings to decorate government buildings. My rent on Montgomery Street cost five dollars a week, she said. She often socialized in bars and restaurants with other artists like Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo. She left briefly to live in northern New Mexico at the suggestion of her boyfriend at the time, also an artist, but found her way back to the city after they broke up. That's when I learned that love was temporary, but I'd always have my art. After that experience, she loved openly and without care, followed a lover to China for a few years and there got addicted to drugs, lived with a Dutch painter in the same small town where he and his wife lived, hid out in a shack in rural Yugoslavia, now Slovenia, overlooking vineyards with a drunk poet and his pet bird. Have you heard of abstract expressionism? Asked the old woman. She'd never heard such wild stories in her life, had never known anyone with a story like hers. Everyone she knew, her family, friends, relatives, went straight to college or nursing school, worked all day, had dinner in the evening and went to bed early, only to repeat it all the next day. Church on Sundays followed by an afternoon of cleaning and laundry. She knew this other world existed, but had never met or spoken to anyone living it, actually living it without apology or explanation. Abstract expressionism had been her favorite movement as an art history major, a major that now seemed distant and irrelevant. English majors seemed too pretentious and besides she didn't like to write and film majors were required to make films, something she couldn't see herself doing. What to record? How to record it? When she landed on art history, her parents looked confused and disappointed, but considering the fact that it took her four years after high school to start college due to a lack of focus and motivation, they figured any major was better than not attending college at all. What she really wanted to do without knowing how to articulate it or even admit it to herself was paint, not just study other painters and analyze their brushstrokes, symbolism, use of color and imagery, but create something on the canvas. Her fear of exposure led her to do everything but paint, study other artists, visit museums, take a class trip to Florence to gaze at David at the Academia and Botticelli's work at the Ufizi, subscribe to art magazines, and even interview artists for a school project. Everything and anything except putting a brush to canvas. After graduation, her brother-in-law got her a job in a software company and now she used corporate speak like circle back and moving forward and ping me for lunch. I love Joan Mitchell, she said. The old woman asked for the time. She then reached for an arsenal of medication, lifted the cap off a prescription bottle, and rolled a blue pill into her palm and then a white one, a pink one, and a red gel caplet. With a half empty glass of champagne, she swallowed each pill resting in between doses. Thank you so much. Next is Bonnie Y. Lee Kwan. She's a poet, multiple disciplinary artist, engineer, and mother of two. Her Pushkart nominated poetry and fiction have been published in the California Quarterly, the Columbia Review, Crab Orchard Review, and elsewhere. Her poetry collections are Ravel and the Quenching. Her plays Lyriope and There Is No Stopping My Thoughts were staged at Stanford University and the Oakland Asian Cultural Center respectively. Thank you. I find myself returning to this poem, which I wrote some years ago. I just think that I wish we could progress to a point where I don't need to return to this contraband. When we touch tongue to tongue, you can taste the languages I speak. Sui, water, zithong, hat, guest, consonants clipped from your lips. Sui, hat, water, guest. I ask you for songs your mother sang to you. I remember them and sing them in the quiet. I know a song about a clay doll. She's a doll, not a baby. She has no mommy, she has no daddy. Clay doll, clay doll, a doll of clay. She has a nose, she has a mouth, but she can't speak. I know a song about a rabbit and the moon. Where are you jumping to? I'm jumping to the full moon of the 15th. When we touch tongue to tongue, you know I traffic in songs. I steal from you when you're not watching. Sing to you when you're not listening. You're loving you, though my heart's bleeding. If she leaves you, don't worry. There's someone who loves you. I'm here. I come from a line of smugglers. My great-grandfather was a Sui hat, a water guest, though he walked between Hong Kong and the mainland. The contraband? Don't laugh. Dried seafood. What duty would he have had to pay? My father arrived in the U.S. with a suitcase full of nothing but ideas. U.S. customs and border protection welcomes you to the United States. I have nothing to declare. My parents settled in snow. Snow past spring. I was their firstborn, though there was one before me, conceived too early in another country, uprooted from my mother's womb. Declare all articles you've acquired abroad and are bringing into the United States. I have nothing to declare. When we touch tongue to tongue, I taste secrets like salt on the corner of your lips. When your mother broke the news of your presence to your father, he said, when this happens to my wife, she takes care of it. CBP officers will determine duty. I have nothing to declare. Your finger travels along my waist with no intent. I ease you into me again as I would a finger into snow. Declare all articles on this declaration form and show the value in U.S. dollars. I have nothing to declare. I show you where to find the zipper on my raw silk blouse. As if to say, how would you like to know me? When we kiss in the morning, you hide your tongue behind your lips. I have nothing to declare. There are times travel is easy as a skirt billowing around my knees. On a bridge in Amsterdam, a woman speaks to me in Dutch. I can only guess she's asking directions. I smile and reply in the language I think we share. I don't know. We laugh. Once a year, birds build a bridge in the sky. For lovers, yes. Also for those who laugh and say, I don't know. But you're down. I don't know. In the Sheeshmahal Mirror Palace of Amir, I've seen my many selves reflected in thousands of mosaic miratiles. How many selves have I left behind? Once a year, birds build a bridge in the sky. I travel so easily, I could almost forget how my mother refused to use my U.S. passport when we traveled to communist China. If war broke between the countries of my two selves, I could claim, I don't know. I have nothing to declare. My father can discern the colors a crawfish sees. Bees see sweeps of blue where we see white. I would like to know how a bee regards this country. I would like to know what a bee carries. I have, we have, commercial merchandise, articles for sale, samples used for soliciting orders or goods that are not considered personal effects. I have nothing to declare. My father built a machine to parse speech. A difference profile is generated for each pair of significant phonemes by subtracting the phoneme of each, from the profile of each other phoneme, U.S. patent office abstract. He travels unquestioned across the Pacific. Controlled substances, obscene articles, and toxic substances are generally prohibited entry. I have nothing to declare. My father quotes a man approaches a border checkpoint with a white horse. The guard tells him, horses are not allowed. This is a white horse, not a horse, he replied. Confounded, the guard lets him through. We can't apply the same word horse to both the general class of horses and its subclasses, white horse, black horse, wild horse. Yet Salzi concludes, the word horse can represent all things. I ask, can the word American apply to both the general class of Americans and all its subclasses, white American, African American, Asian American, Native American? Can we declare the word American represents all humanity? Let us keep a moment of silence for the Americans. Oscar Grant, Trayvon Martin, Jonathan Ferrell, Renisha McBride, Vincent Chin, Jacob Valdiviezzo, Alex Neato, Michael Brown, Eric Gardner, Freddie Gray. They are the unwanted children of this country. I travel so easily I could almost forget. Americans with skin of a darker hue might take the subway, sell cigarettes, deliver lunch to their children and never come home. I travel so easily I could almost forget. I am still here in this country loving you and you and you and you. I'm still here loving you though my heart's bleeding. Broken windshields, eggs thrown into my friend's Honda in Ann Arbor. I am still here Executive Order 9066, Question 27, are you willing to serve in the armed forces of the United States on combat duty wherever ordered? Question 28, will you swear unqualified allegiance to the United States of America and faithfully defend the United States from any and all attack by foreign or domestic forces and for swear any form of allegiance to the Japanese Emperor or any other foreign government power or organization? I have nothing to declare. The 442nd Regiment gave themselves to their country like the rabbit who jumped into fire to feed an old man who was hungry. Rabbit, rabbit, where are you jumping to? Some declared no no to questions 27 and 28. I will speak to you when you speak to me in the language outside the coercion of forms and fences. Some danced behind fences to the song. Oh give me land, lots of land under starry skies above. Don't fence me in. Let me ride through the wide open country that I love. Don't fence me in. Some made love silently, tongue to tongue, a tremulous beginning like a husky note in the back of the throat, an orchid stem with a stolen, swollen note, a contraband bud. Sign on the other side of the form after you have read this important information above and made a truthful declaration. I have nothing to declare. I traffic in songs unsung. One quiet evening, you took in a 13 year old boy. His song has no rainbows. Only a boy doing his sums late into the evening. And a man watching him like the father you both imagine into existence. I traffic in songs with quiet beginnings. I sing them in the quiet. She's a doll, not a baby. She has no loving mama. She has no loving papa. Clay doll, clay doll, a doll of clay. I'll be her mama. I'll be her papa. I'll love her forever. Thank you. The next three readers will be Don De Dancie, Crystal Rika Perkins, and Farzane Safavi. Don De Dancie is a career paralegal for a multinational law firm by day. In her creative life, though, she writes prose poetry, short stories, and novellas, sometimes under the pen name C. Elise. Her work has been published in Brown Sugar, Kaidang Kai, Rigorous, and Talking to Strangers. She supports community through right now her weekly sub-stack, a shout and a sentence, and as an editor for Real Hyphen Stories on Medium. Hello. Okay, I'm gonna read this story. It's titled Digestive Demons. So don't just count calories. Granny Nail swishes and sways her broad skirt-clad hips down the sliver of a hallway, carefully avoiding loose and squeaky floorboards. Don't want to stare the entire house she utters to an accent wall, filled with photos documenting three generations. Kim folk everywhere. She continues to bootles her aging Siamese cat. It is the eve before the eve of her grandson's wedding. Her imposing two-story home is for the first time filled with more relatives than relics. After 13 hours of incessant opening and closing of the opaque front door to Greek guests, delivery drivers, and nosy neighbors, she has dire need for me time. Her feather-slipper clad feet pitter past the grandfather clock, announcing minutes until the witching hour in the direction of the massive boudoir tucked farthest into the top wing. She floats past an antique scroll top chest, then stops in front of the slightly ajar door to the biggest of the two guest bedrooms. Bedtime honey, she calls to pops feel. Her muscular and much younger new husband sprawl peacefully in a leather lounger and snoring passively in front of a blaring television. She releases something akin to a giggle before resuming her trek. Then glaciates mid-step after Benji yells. She rolls slowly, intentionally, smelling sooty, bitter, and accurate, loud enough to summon the dead. Granny Nail's instincts force her nostrils to flare. She grits until both incisors slide down, giving her face an angler, wolfish shadow. What the? She muses with a swift pivot into the second guest bedroom. Granny Nail's hand arcs 30 degrees, taps the wall plate, then sweeps down into her skirt pocket. The dorm-sized space is flooded with a hue more yellow than ashen gold, and a distant aisle releases three shallow hoots. Exhausted from a day of wedding errands, too many cocktails, and a dinner of too many calories, Benji lies diagonally prone, eyes tightly shut, obviously in the deepest stage of sleep. He continues. She pushed up and over white and blue flames, lapping at the invisible follicles covering her shins and calves. Granny Nail folds her arms over breasts too perky to belong to a woman of her season, then raises her neatly arched eyebrow. She opens her mouth to speak, but is interrupted when Benji whispers, conjurer, then quickly asks. She unfurled and mimicked the flames springing up and threatening to obliterate the canvas covering her calcified protective frame. Muse is Granny Nail after Benji releases a series of burps. The tinkled jingle of her gold bracelets spiced the small space when she steps over a tiny mound of sneakers, then zags around an open suitcase. Benji, Benji, she sings. He stares his head across an ivory linen encased pillow, but doesn't wake. Benji, she calls a decibel higher, better making her presence known. Grand replies Benji before shielding his eyes from the glare of the fully lighted room. Granny Nail pulls her heart shaped pout into a toothy rendition of grand maternal love, then without an ounce of malice inquires. Benji, how many times have I told you cheese causes disturbing dreams? Next is Crystal Rika Perkins. She's a biracial Black Japanese writer living in Oakland and teaching high school at the Academy in San Francisco. She holds an MFA from Antioch. She's an active member of Right Now and an alum of Volna Voices and Rooted and Written. She's been published in Beijing Scene, City Weekend, Metro, that's Shanghai, and in the anthologies Essential Truths and American Fiction 17 from New River Press. Hi everyone. Thank you so much for coming out and thank you for such a way for inviting me. This is a short story that I worked on in the Right Now workshops, the Saturday workshops this was one of my first pieces that I workshopped through Right Now and I published it last year. It's called You Soar. In all of your five years of existence, you have never been on a plane. You always went by car to Great Grandma's Farm in Missouri or Grandma's House in California. So when mommy says that we are going to Grandma's House, you are expecting to go by car. Sitting in the middle of the back seat of your dad's black Mustang with the top down for hours, daddy drives, stopping the car occasionally to go pee, get gas, or eat. He hangs his brown hands on the steering wheel, one hand tapping out a rhythm in his head. Mommy sits in front, her long black hair blowing towards you in the back seat. Her almond eyes glance in the rear view mirror to check on you. Her creamy right arm turning bronze is testimony to the time the drive takes. You look forward to Grandma's hugs and her dog's licks upon arrival. So you don't know what to make of all this when daddy stops and drops you and mommy off at the curb saying, I'll meet you at Grandma's House in a few days. Mommy tells you, here we are at the airport. Daddy will fly separately and meet us in California at Grandma's House. Airport, you ask, but I thought, where's Grandma's House? You are confused. The airport is where we catch a plane to fly to Grandma's. Mommy is dressed in longish white pants and a striped t-shirt and she has her sandals on for going to parks. She gets out of the car and opens the door for you. As you shimmy out, mommy reaches down, straightens your ponytail braids with white plastic barrettes that match your white sandals and smooths out your pink dress in the back where the car seat pushed it up. You peer at the mass of gigantic shiny metal and tiny glass and glass buildings. You hear the whoosh of the automatic glass sliding door as they open and you walk with mommy into the tall open building with white tile floors. You hear numbers being called. Names announced as mommy leads you past multiple counters and snake-like lines of people's caravans of suitcases. Families, pairs, people, everyone is going somewhere. Luggage is stocked on carts. Mommy gets a cart and the man helps her put a luggage on it. You wonder because you are inside, but the windows reach the sky. Mommy stops you at one of the large windows looking out onto a parking lot for airplanes and points out the planes taking off and landing and she points to the men and women walking by in uniforms and tells you about the stewardesses and airplane pilots in their crisp dark suits and what they do in the air. You hear your mommy chime in as part of the course of mommies telling their children to keep up. We are going to grandma's by air. We are flying so you trudge along towing your own little pink suit case on wheels following your mommy down long hallways with blue carpet onto and through the people mover past the airline sitting area after airline sitting area walls with warm with orange paneling and signs. You and mommy get all the way to the plane entrance. You are supposed to walk through the tunnel and close walkway and ramp to the plane. But you get scared when you hear a high pitched but distance roar and imagine a monster a great vacuum sucking up all the people that go through the door. You saw all the other people go through the tunnel and not come out and you imagine that they are stuffed as tight as sardines in a can. As you and mommy get closer the sounds get louder and you panic balking at going any further. Just as mommy pulls you towards the plane you dig your heels into the carpet screaming crying holding on to chairs. You don't care that people are staring not into the airplane for sure. No you holler. Your bawling fills the room as you refuse to board the plane. You thrash. Mommy pulls you back as you try to run away. She picks you up and tries to carry you to comfort you by singing a song in Japanese but you shinny down her torso and slip out of her arms. You grasp the closest most stable object a table post and hold on to it as if anchoring yourself against a level five tornado. Mommy shushes you consoles you and promises you everything to make you stop. Instead you collapse on the carpet spiraling kicking wailing and rolling on the ground trying to crawl away. Through your catterwalling you don't hear the stewardess say ma'am we have to close the door and take off now. You only see the door close the door gets smaller and seems to swallow itself and disappear. Then mommy stops puts her wary heads head in her hands and cries so the plane leaves without you or mommy. Some days after that you know daddy works at the air force base. You see him in the living room photos with other uniformed men standing in front of steel nosed airplanes. When daddy comes home from work he always smells of oil and gas a greasy machine smell. Today on this sunny day in Colorado Springs daddy is driving you to the base. He drives you past a building that looks like a giant white cheese grater and explains this is the Air Force Academy Chapel saying this is how you know when you're at the Air Force Academy you see that building. Then he parks and he takes you to a huge building which daddy calls a hangar and there are three or four planes. Daddy asks you do you know I'm an airplane mechanic and this is a garage for planes? Did you know I could fly a plane? He takes your hand and walks you through the hangar showing you all about the planes he was working on pointing out the engines propellers wings and wheels. He tells you you can walk around but don't go too far and don't touch anything. After daddy finishes working on a small size plane in the garage he invites you to walk up the stairs into the plane and see the insides he hoists you up the metal stairs and holds you as you climb then he follows you and gives you an extra boost to help you stand on board through the plane's portal. Once he steps in he pulls the door handle shut and gives another tug to make sure it is locked. Daddy shows you the tiny restroom and points out all the kinds of gadgets and doohickeys inside the plane. Your footsteps make a knocking sound as you walk around. See you could sit here and look out the window. You sit noticing the springiness of the musty cushion and put your arms on the rest. Daddy adds you got to put your seatbelt on just like in a car and you manage to put one on one end into the other and they click in place. Then you push up the shutter of the porthole window and look out onto the tarmac. While you look around daddy quietly goes to the front door of the plane. He walks into the cockpit and you get up and follow him. He sits down in his seat telling you about the different knobs and levers and how these control the plane. Want to see how I make the plane go? Daddy looks at you while he flicks switches and adjusts knobs. He says listen we have to wake up the engine. Sounds like starting car but many times louder. You feel the floor start to rumble and your ears vibrate. As the sound becomes higher pitched you feel your heart beating faster. Daddy keeps telling you that is the sound from the engine and the propellers I showed you earlier. He turns on the plane and drives the plane out the hanger. When you feel the plane move daddy says see there's nothing to be afraid of. Daddy drives the plane all the way out of the hanger. You don't notice when the plane rolls out onto the tarmac. All you see is your daddy sitting in the seat in front of the plane. You are looking at all the dials and buttons and levers in front of him. He is telling you you are a brown miniature version of your Japanese mom. If your mom had never taken a plane you would never be you. So you will be brave and sore like mommy did when she came to marry me and live in this country. Then you notice you are a little scared but daddy isn't scared. He is talking to you and you are talking back so you aren't as scared as you feel the plane move. You watch him intently and he is watching you as you ask about the other day as he asks about the other day when you didn't get on the plane. You tell him how scared you were and how it was this dark tunnel they wanted you to go into and how you couldn't see when it was all the way down there. There was a big whooshing sound and you thought there was a monster but you're not scared now. You ask him so how do you know when you are off the ground? How do you know when you are flying? You ask daddy because it doesn't make sense that this big plane could get into the air. He is telling you all about how the plane goes faster and then the nose lifts off the ground. Daddy says it's hard for me to describe. There's a moment just as the plane lifts off. It's like that feeling when you jump in the air and just before you come down. I can tell you all kinds of ways but you just have to feel it for yourself know it for yourself. Then he adds you are flying now. A few days later daddy drives you to the airport. As he drops you and mommy off at the curb he says I'll meet you at grandma's house in a few days. After this every time after this you walk down that long dark hallway to step into the plane and you put your baggage in the overhead compartments and you sit by the window and you wait for the feeling of the plane accelerating and lifting off the ground and you know that you will soar. Next is Farzanay Safavi and then Karla Brundage, Kimi Sugiyoka and then Sarah Beale. Farzanay Safavi has lived in many countries including Iran where she spent the first decade of her life. It is there that she understood that poetry resides in everything thus began her love affair with words and their relationship with the world. She holds an MA in comparative literature and teaches English at Mission High School in San Francisco. Thank you Shizue. Thank you so much for inviting me and having me here with you. So I'm actually a teacher on sabbatical this year and so I'm working on putting together a collection of poems that started off during the pandemic and so and and thereafter so it's kind of like the stories of then and now. I'm going to share a couple of stories about during the pandemic and just go ahead and read a couple of some a couple of my new ones. When children forget to play clouds disappear but the cold remains our gaze I'm sorry I'm gonna start over and I should have printed this one out but okay one more time. When children forget to play clouds disappear but the cold remains our gaze is towards the future but we are all in a haze the street lamps come on in haste of fireworks dancing in our skies days of our isolation may be just a whimper in the distant cries when time passes you are not the same old books and papers gather so much cobwebs of over 400 days then that enough water will wash the dust away imprints on the face where lips peeled upwards are replaced by vertical lines of age a faint memory of distant days of who I was who of who I used to be still lingers like holding on to little red balloons on a string slipping through my fingers reflections the woman walked towards the clear placid waters of a lake a mirror stood reflecting amidst the boulders crossing the river unaware of the threshold of everything that that breathed she stepped in through the mirror without trepidation a walk into the mirror is a walk into their own reflections the voice is set behind the forest walls they may find convolution of memories a kaleidoscope of possibilities opened in multicolored universes a world of their own making the travel series of rebirths one slowly making peace with all the women I used to be watching from familiar distances leaving each of them shimmering in the light filled shadows in the depths of the blue seas in the heat of summer days in the windy alleys alleyways where curiosity wandered in the twilight of lovers playgrounds in the thrill of being lost too my mind plays tricks on me was it you that walked the cobblestone streets of eternal cities still unaware of the ground beneath your feet or their heavy or their heavy might the lights come on and I still cannot find where we left off centuries ago the only traces are memories that hover like a hummingbird searching for nectar inside inside the remains of flowers at the end of summer days three train seen the lines in my palms in the palms of my hand to the next destined land with a whole with a loaded train that trails in these trotted paths were decades of lustrous love hangs by a thread to fly again free from time's bondage I shall need wings and new eyes to see the stars and forget that they are dying in the skies to find life renewed again in a new age of wisdom and becoming the station at the station platforms each waiting for their train to be transported to a place that is not here home as far away strangers with their heads down ears plugged past without a glance awakening to the sun god after being asleep for what seems like centuries nights passed through purgatory waiting for the sunrise she found herself laying down on the bare golden shimmering sands of the desert floor arms open like the wings of ecces raising her head she saw the body of the sphinx beside her the eternal protector she caught wind of her breath the blazing sun gazing down at her palms pressed together praying that the gods may remember this home has thorns in it arrival after a long journey homes home seems a stranger place hard to settle in this too quickened return to a reality that is not altogether my making here lies an arid land of thorny weeds that grow and grow voluntarily dominating beauty beauty and beauty's obstruction shrouded skies and forget forgotten roads where the sun ravishes the already unquenched and hardened earth like an angry god the only monument here is my mother standing at the door bent over her flowers unforgiving time in this lonesome desert has brittle her bones my mirage water to my travelers thirst heart filled with an all-encompassing sun that brought heat to my whole being body fatigued from traveling distances still in time lapse the tender strength of my mother made space to spill the spells I had brought home she gave me space to spill tears to dispel the time lapse and bring me back to her just maybe one more seagulls in the wind sometimes my words grow thin like the crackling screeches of sometimes my words grow thin like the crackling screech of seagulls in the wind I watch them extinguish like a star's fire in the distance I am retrieving my words like the retreating sea from its shore at night where strange silences overtake the crashing calm sound of the waves and you can no longer distinguish between the sea and the sky the shallows of the sea's depth reveal itself as exposed pathways for us to for lonely passengers thank you next is carla brundage she's a bay area based poet activist and educator with a passion for social justice she believes that in order to restore balance to earth racist structures must be dismantled a push cart nominee prize nominee she's the author of swallowing watermelons and mulatta not so tragic and co-editor of sisters across oceans her work can be found in conch hip mama sparkle and blink and uncommon ground she's the founder of west oakland west oakland to west africa poetry exchange and co-publisher of pacific raven press thank you shizue and thank you for having us here in this venue and in this capacity i was recently in gana i returned and um it was a san kofa journey a return to retrieve what has been lost i often wonder how does that word land with people and is it possible to return again and again to retrieve what was lost and i would argue yes the first time i returned in 2001 i went to zimbabwe and i lived there for a year and what i retrieved was how much i didn't know i retrieved my ignorance i went back again in 2013 to live for three years in cote d'voix and when i was there i retrieved some kind of sense of feeling of belonging something that i had never really had and since then i've returned many times um with west oakland to west africa uh um organization i found founded and this most recent trip was with um about 10 people who exchanged poems with poets in gana with a group called a holocaust over the course of maybe a year and a half or two and um we published this book sisters across oceans and um while there we visited the slave dungeons the door of no return which has now been renamed the door of return um as the awareness is growing that um in the great maafa in the tragedy of the slavery exchange we had been stolen and we had been sold and there's this idea of reconciliation and learning about each other on both sides of the atlantic whenever i go to cape coast and go to the slavery dungeons although i've been a few times i still learn something each time each time my eyes are lifted up to the fact that on top of the dungeons was a church and on top of the church was where you know the installed governors of the various european countries were installed and in the dungeons were people who were being held captive and women who suffered great sexual violence so this one is for the women for the women who decided to jump for the women whose bodies became collateral for women who chose to use our bodies to survive for women who had no choice whose bodies were dragged over stone and splintered dry docks for women who walked long miles feet cracked and caked dirt of their homeland for women who could walk no longer for the women who suffered in darkness for women who chose freedom women who aspired to light for women who chose to love who bit their tongues until they bled for women who held seeds in our hair for the women who gave birth in the middle passage for the women who lost children for women who kept the children of others who were lost for the women who carried a hoe for the women who carried a baby and a hoe for the women who held on to the songs burning in their mouth spitting out language and were beaten for women whose breasts were violated shivering and unclean for women whose minds broke for women who chose to survive for women who chose to forget those who remain silent for the salty scars we bear for women who had never seen the sea and women whose hands turned the water into healing magic for the women who brought culture in the crooks of their ashy elbows women whose tears became healing salve this poem is for the women thank you um I think I want to leave you with this thought uh it was poetry that saved my life in uncommon ground I write about this journey the bay area coming here finding my voice with people like terita and avacha huge mentors and um this san kofa journey has been another level in my healing and that's how I came to start west oakland to west africa because there was something in my heart that said even if san kofa means different things to different people even if the return home to retrieve what is lost can mean whatever it's really important and so I want to thank you kimmy sugioka is a poet laureate of al of the city of alameda she is a mother educator and poet with an mfa from neropa university in boulder her work appears in numerous anthologies and she has published two books of poetry the newest of which is while while and wing published by manic depress kimmy believes that creating community through art is a revolutionary act thank you shoes away thank you all for your words your thoughts your wisdom um yeah thank you so much for having me i'll just read a poem um from my book explain some things about me called half privileged half japanese half scots irish half upper middle class coca-cola in the fridge tempura or roast beef on the table apple pie in the oven half neglected garbanzo beans olives and popcorn scavenge because my mother was too broke or broken to shop or cook half north carolina demure half california dissident half exotic lily merchant marine pinup girl half loved half privileged to go to college get by inherit enough for a condo down payment half terrified of not being able to pay the mortgage but making sure to buy 20 pairs of socks for my son so he won't get the bleeding feet i had as a child because of the one pair of socks i were all week half absorbed and self-indulgent half plagued by madness depression and guilt half nihilist half optimist half stubborn half acquiescent half brilliant half broken half penitent half impudent half teacher half poet half sinner half seraph half you half me half otter half tree half salmon swimming out to sea thank you thank you um this is another poem i wrote called the language of birds ask the stones how your desires could have snapped the backs of winged creatures flocking to some other heat unregistered in this armored unrequited grammar spidering along some soft pink moan some grunting shame you shaved from your head in a pillow of night where you reclined for an instant till a falling maple leaf disturbed you till the threads of a cobweb bound you till a meadowlark song troubled you all this endangering the last translator of the language of birds who breaks in the moment between the slap and the child's cry for you who long to answer and um thank you i'm going to read one new poem i feel like it's a good idea this is called fanning the rice wash the rice till the water runs clear steam it and fan it until it shines chop five ingredients crab scallion avocado daikon ginger there are ways to prepare food frozen dinners macaroni and cheese packets canned chili and then there are ways to prepare sushi musaka shoshu sukyaki dozens of restaurants handed down from mothers and aunts this is how you fold in the egg whites lightly flour biscuit and paedo knead bread blanch peaches canned beans tomatoes and corn make masa for tamales tie them in husks or leaves laborious daylong commitments to flavor and texture my aunt neighbor stepmother mother of friends i'll take pride in creations that undeniably prove their love that requires savoring morsels of honey cake pillows of cream i used to plan and cook elaborate meals of comforting food to prove my love my worth my right of passage now i hurry to eat frozen pot pies to quell a clenching hunger from waiting too long to eat by cakes and prepared meats select the simplest recipes when friends come to dinner muse and write dreams and poems instead of baking cookies and mopping the floor i admire those who sweat and toil to proffer pavlovas and tarts and sometimes feel flawed for refusing to anguish over epicurean delicacies but not enough to stop writing thank you next will be um sarah bill and then steve fuji mora to rita mckel and our last reader will be young wan choy um sarah bill is co-editor of colossus body she's a poet visual artist and social worker living in oakland california her poems have been published in sparkle and blink butt and i review and beyond words literary magazine she is interested in the creative process as a medium for change healing and community building her debut poetry collection prescribed burn was recently published by finishing line press thank you um i'm so honored to be part of this event and to i just thank you so much sis away for inviting us um the first uh poem i'm going to read is from colossus home it is was colossus presses second anthology and um this anthology all the proceeds or all the money coming from books that are sold goes to support moms for housing this is called umbilical home first there was an ember a splintered spark moment of catch germination each history roots in unique terrain unfurls in an umbilical home we creatures are tender fruit always vigilant we listen for the peripheral call nod recognition along this distant music humming us back our crooked rambles laments anthems or jingles some songs pulse the crackle in evening fires surge a laughing cacophony of wing filled flocks croon the caress of newborn grass teas with jump rope rhymes smack and giggle sun warm schoolyards some of us are sung in deep shade our songs whisper a memory of absence perpetual cannons chronicle the weight of empty arms our symphonies rage eruptions of fear violence marvels fragile hearts our tunes are toxic flickers of blue flame poison rising and feathered rivulets catches the ankle of every escape some songs are a singular vessel tenacious not immutable we could kumos new hymns and sing them brash from porches and balconies and fire escapes let's sing for a constant an endless offering a place of return of rhythmic possibilities licked wounds sing the smell of oranges a kiss to the nape of a worry wound neck a refuge for dreams and remade plans a refrain whole enough to hold all the tears laughter fights and midnight snacks we gather to rock ourselves to sleep thank you um and each colossus like the right now anthologies have a lot of the amazing writers from um the incredible literary community that we have in the bay area um i don't have anything in our second book which is colossus freedom but i'm going to encourage you to look at it um many of the writers in this book are currently incarcerated and many of the writers were also families who have a family member missing due to incarceration um and what i think the system doesn't understand is that when you incarcerate one person you actually are incarcerating their whole family um so that's an important thing to remember um and so our latest book colossus body just came out a few months ago i'm really really excited about it i love all the work in this book we um had contributing writers from not only all over the bay area in the united states but writers from new zealand and africa and canada so it was really exciting anthology to put together and i'm so grateful to all the other editors that are working with me to create these anthologies um and so this is our fourth anthology um it was conceived in may 2020 right after the dobs decision was leaked to the public um the right to bodily autonomy is in the minds of the colossus press editors the most basic human right and the history um of not allowing people to have bodily autonomy particularly in the united states is something that goes back way before even the founding the 1776 founding of the united states back to the middle passage and even back further than that to the founding of jamestown in the 1500s they were bringing enslaved people to this land and that's a really big deal so we've been fighting this fight for a really long time um but the thing to know is that the constitutional fabric on which the dobs decision was made um connects to a lot of other things so the choice to continue or terminate a pregnancy is just sort of the tip of the icebergs sticking out of the water there's a lot below that um that will affect all of us and our families freedom of marriage freedom to love freedom to choose our clothing all of these things are connected to autonomy and freedom and choice and that's why this is a really scary time so thank you and um um so my poem from uh colossus body is called unborn unwanted unlucky unwed unknotted unscripted unsaid unburden unbidden unbrushed unburied unbroken unjust unfolded and finished unmade unlawful unbalanced unpaid unblemished unaltered unarmed unbuckled unbridled unharmed unbounded unbuttoned undone and spoken unwoken unwon and common unstable undressed and certain unquiet unrest unwelcome and civil unsaid unlikely uncommon unread and ending unable untold and open unsettled and sold unscripted unrivaled and worn unbitten unblemished unborn and seemingly unkind uncoiled untitled unsigned unspoiled thank you next is steve fujimura he's a poet from san jose california currently living in berkeley his writing engages with memory history loss and family his work can be found in new american writing milvia street art and literary journal essential truths the bay area and color and other publications his poetry collection sad asian music was published by finishing line press in 2022 thanks shes uh appreciate you organizing um i love being with right now the few times i was able to work with you guys and thanks to uh sf library i want to shout out to my um elementary school classmate ray who came uh we both went to elementary school in san jose all right thank you empire gardens empire gardens okay i'm just gonna read from my book um sad asian music some pieces um first one is called occupy news fall i think i'm just gonna read two parts not the whole thing occupy news fall at the port of oakland four people in one of several occupy buses blocking the unloading of shipments according to scott had an argument about tactics this occurred when the teamsters in large empty trucks broke up the large broke up the group of buses by speeding past them aggressively dispatchers told the greyhound drivers not to let occupiers off and to leave the port altogether one occupier writing the bus singing was an elderly mexican american woman who was asked by an agitated white woman to stop the white woman in turn was reprimanded by a middle-aged white man to let the older women sing the white man was told by an african-american butch lesbian to shut his mouth scott said occupiers have been warned by group leaders when arrests are imminent and people of color are encouraged to leave en masse before police arrive the difference in treatment that non-white people receive when arrested by authorities is recognized as a threat to the occupy movement david solnit occupy trainer acknowledged said scott a berkeley poet whose poet partner was pushed to the ground was jabbed just hard enough in the ribs by predominantly white men and a single woman of color in darth vader riot gear he wrote the force by which the alameda sheriffs push back with batons and unarmed populace of students in their indiscriminate beating of men and women shocked the former poet laureate another poet a woman was dragged by the hair by sheriffs when she offered herself up for arrest a fourth poet got a rib broken whether by police or by other means is not clear the poet laureate said that the entire california university system is paralyzed by a minority of legislators whose only idea is that they don't want to pay one more cent in taxes stop there i'll go to my next one this one um thank you uh this is called mother memory my mother may be having memory problems is it due to a lack of social contact yet she does have friends marie causico and another whose friend i forget our memory of a feeling without words inspires loss sadness an only son and single mother meeting my father's mother for the first time in 2009 she remembers more than most at her age 96 we are lucky she tells her story i recorded on video a vulnerable medium for memory are we making new memories my mother and i she seems to be going along without attachment she tells me to stay at my new job for the pension she tells me not to spend too much she reiterates not to waste as if i had not heard her before yet she did call to make sure i return for my week-long trip okay she is not reading books anymore after a lifetime of reading she is soft spoken she still laughs at my sarcasm my partner and i watched the newest jane air movie and i remember how my mother used to watch different versions of this film how much i believe my mother identified with jane who ran away from rochester and briefly lived in a modest space alone which my mother sort of lives in now in a small apartment among other seniors no need for men she intimates except for me who takes her out to lunch or dinner sometimes i think my mother used to identify with mary tyler more in the 1970s and with audrey heppern and breakfast at tiffany's i'm sure the internment plays a part today i no longer know if my mother is if my mother is losing her memory the perhaps those older memories remain intact not the newer ones or more recent outings together she may have forgotten perhaps even her visit to taiwan seeing us during chinese new year i'm reluctant to confirm this with her is that how memory fades if i could just read one more this is actually from the essential truths anthology that was published by shiz and others it's it's pretty short it's called wane shiz wrote a great you wrote a great piece about the strawberry camps and this is where my mother is from as well and as a kid in the 1970s i would go down there because my grandparents still pick strawberries and i would visit my cousin wane who lived next door wane he died young 24 due to a civil war in the streets between black and white and a few koreans with guns on la rooftops and others watched or ran and he watched ran got a gun too against those who beat rodney king that night beat him and went free causing the riot a white truck driver pulled from his cab and stoned and punched and kicked on tv he watched that passively as one could watch that and it was painful to the other him watching triggering the memory he remembered a gun dormant under a bed a gun used for hunting said the tv news a gun that fired semi-automatic rounds under and over police cars injuring two officers in an armory where he stopped to end the force of the state he was in we figured it must make sense at his age 24 depressed a time that's been repeated again and again if only that were the sound of him coming back again from the fields where we played among the strawberries thank you next is terita mckel she's an oakland native 2002 poet in residence at the museum at the african diaspora original black panther alum story medicine woman chi energy reader poet author and educator she has published 73 at-risk student anthologies in five bay area counties her works have been published or performed from the americas to africa france uk australia japan and china her poetry collection synchronicity oracle of sun medicine was nominated for the california book award thank you thank you so much uh shes and everyone here i you know when relatives say so you're still writing your little poems yes yes and i'm i'm so honored to be among poets writers thinkers you know without us i don't know what what the world would be but let me get moving here okay the first piece bells labyrinth sticks and stones break bones and homes take fish hook stars from eyes alter alter arc arc covenant government enterprise enterprise paradise paradise profits profits sale sale worship worship pray pray peace peace sun sun perish perish jewel jewel good god good god is a weak declension nonetheless it comes from the word good isn't that interesting why alter earth's alter silence the arc for an arc why douse sacred fire of every kind who enters prize for this enterprise why did the son of a son worship with worship pray on those who pray for peace set sail for sale of peace with paradise for paradise governments profits gamble with profits covenant of light will jewels perish and perish of jewels whose good is sacrificed for the concept of god and next piece um this is from the time when the tribune called asking about guns lifelike remembered we are soldiers on the battlefield with lifelike in our eyes said sister sonia 1994 23 years after volunteering at the george jackson free health clinic the tribune calls asked how many guns did you have at the black panther clinic how many guns not how many services were provided not how many programs were implemented not how many doctors or healthcare workers volunteered not even wide weave care to put into place such a practice with so many hospitals in our community no didn't ask any of that wanted to know how many guns we had not what illnesses or diseases most affected our communities or how often we screened for diabetes sickle cell or checked for high blood pressure if at all or what may have been my specialty at the time i would have told them about certain grains to regain genetic memory but they were more interested in how many guns we had not who ran the clinic or what hours or days of the week we were open or who was our hero or she rode to set about such a task that sustains our needs today no the reporter didn't ask any of that wanted to know how many guns we had black men and women late teens to 20 somethings volunteered to become doctors nurses pharmacists therapists completed homework between seeing patients black volunteer staff positions dr talbott smalls and eddie newson developed methadone programs to destroy heroin dependence reverse curse of opioid addictions purposely placed in our neighborhoods to weaken the black power base we took vital signs provided prenatal care kept patient records organized charts med rooms pharmacy gade better care than kaiser dared held life light in our eyes books our bullets educationally armed our right to fight through walls that imprisoned us as violent drug-infested gun-carrying sex crazed jigger booze kwami terry warned education in this country makes you stupid but what is worse it makes you arrogant in your stupidity the revolution is coming whether you want it or not it is coming whether you want it or not we must be politically prepared for what is coming the revolution will not be televised not be televised not be televised the revolution will be live how many guns did we have we were soldiers on the battlefield with life light in our eyes we are soldiers on the battlefield with life light in our eyes and i i just want to make a reference because i hear this often um referring to the black panthers using violence they never say self-defense we didn't initiate the violence we were defending ourselves that's all i wanted to say this next piece i'm ending with it's called the spelling bee we attend the spelling bee the 12 year old white male child stood before the proctor waiting his spell assignment stern stone face blonde elder female begins the four monitor i one another the four monitors i one another the nod bell rings proctor says spell nagas nagas the child repeats yes nagas nagas he wonders two thin rails form between his pale blue eyes as young ears begin to redden implicating the word nagas he softly repeats it to himself barely audible eyes jaunting left to right ashamed of what he's thinking the proctor asks can you say it allowed for us please he frowns pushing condemned uncertainty from his mouth nagas dropping his head slowly raising it he stutters can you use it in a sentence please nagas an Ethiopian king a sovereign a self-governing person of Ethiopia nagas the child repeats nagas the proctor repeats child then spells n e g u s correct the proctor says child's eyes saucer wide signal what i had nearly forgotten Ethiopian friend naga told me his name means first light and blackness was on the face of the deep and out of it came the light the book of genesis thank you last but not least young wan choy who i had the pleasure of meeting just this year when he started coming to right now he is a fantastic writer and um he has written a book um called sparks into fire revitalizing teacher practice through collective learning published by teachers college press in 2022 he drew from his experience teaching in south korea in new york city in providence road island and in oakland california currently he shares his expertise on project based learning curriculum design and culturally relevant teaching with the next generation of social studies educators studying at uc berkeley um he posts on next gen learning dot org and podcasts with students at the young and the woke which is definitely worth listening to hi everybody can you all hear me yeah in the back too okay all right uh shoesway said i had seven minutes i'm going to give you all 15 of those seconds back to do any stretching you need to do take a breath through yourself i know we've been sitting through uh some incredible incredible readings and my heart is just like gone through such a roller coaster of emotions and uh man it's if anyone doubts the power of words they just had to be here for for any of this this was like really really incredible all right um i'm going to read from my book uh it's called sparks into fire um shoesway just introduced it i also want to mention that the ford is by erica huggins this is a picture of erica huggins um who is a mentor and um a true uh hero uh a black panther she was the director of the oakland community school for many years um and she's also often comes to my class as a guest speaker and she's just somebody I hold very dear to me um I also want to bring my son into the space uh he designed these bookmarks and it says it's shrumply amazing so uh there are bookmarks back there and uh it says that you have to buy a book but there are so few folks that everybody can take one home with you if you would like um and he's the proud illustrator of the the penguin he loves penguins all right so this is from the first chapter of the book the chapter is called from margins to center telling stories of purpose my formal learning in an educational institution began in preschool in 1978 in virginia there's a photo of my preschool class where i'm literally at the margins my asian features and sour expressions stand out like a dark storm cloud amidst a sky of smiling white faces I am different and unhappy who knows why I was upset that day but that class photo was an ominous sign of the discontent that simmered throughout most of my k-12 school days it was one thing to experience discrimination from complete strangers who were surprised that I spoke english well implying that I was a foreigner to this land or who more maliciously would tell me to go back to where I came from and it was quite another thing to have my classmates and friends cut me down with racial or ethnic comments my classmates made fun of what I ate and what my house smelled like even my friends would use slurs about my chinky eyes taught me with fake karate chops and mocked my family's language with their imitation ching chong sounds my closest friends in high school had a running joke where they would pick up a phone and pretend fake accents included to take orders for young's house of egg rolls race was always in the air but I did not understand that the hurts of my childhood were part of a long history of racism in this country it wasn't until I went to an orientation program for students of color at brown university that I had an insight that would change my life from that point forward the insight was precipitated by a presentation from a community organizer at CAV organizing asian communities a new york city-based organization my mind was ablaze with the very first image he showed us chinese workers building the trans continental railroad i was shocked chinese immigrants had helped build a railway system that would be crucial to the industrial revolution and the growth of the american empire how could i have been kept unaware for so many years and then he showed us the racist caricatures the darkened skin exaggerated overbites and slanted eyes i saw the line connecting those political cartoons of chinese workers in the 1860s to the playground taunts of my korean american childhood was i mad most definitely but i also experienced a feeling that may have been my closest experience to freedom it was as if i had been living through a period of intellectual and social deprivation it was my ignorance that made me hate who i was but knowledge of this history ushered in a new age instead of blaming myself i could see that my experience fit within a history of racist treatment of people of color i could see how the history i was taught in schools was cleansed of the essential contributions of people of color the racist policies and state-sponsored violence against those groups was also erased so that we were left with a sanitized version of history intended to reinforce the centrality and goodness of white people that day was the spark reading was no longer an exercise for school it was an essential discipline to feed a hungry soul i devour books on asian american history and the origins and development of race in the united states protest was how i channeled my early experiences of alienation into demands for a more just world and education would ultimately be my calling education was the institution that had erased me from view but later drew the outlines of my history in bold so that i could see myself more clearly i committed myself to those students who experienced marginalization i wanted them to find their sparks curiosity inspiration and purpose and transform them into the fires of learning thank you well that concludes the readings for today um so go eat some food buy some books and talk to the talk to each other um i just want to say again uh how privileged i feel to know so many amazing writers um and um thank you very much for being here thanks to shawna sherman from the library and kenny alvola thank you