 Welcome everyone. Thanks for coming on your Sunday afternoon to our program today. While I'm waiting for another couple of folks to join us, first I'll introduce myself. I'm John Smalley, Librarian in the General Collections in Humanities Department on the third floor of this library, where we have lots of poetry, about 60,000, 70,000 volumes in English, tens of thousands more in the 41 other languages that we have on the third floor. So while we're waiting for a couple other people to join us, I want to take a moment to acknowledge our community and also to mention a program coming up next weekend. So on behalf of the San Francisco Public Library, we wish to welcome you to the unceded ancestral homeland of the Ramatush Ohlone, who are the original inhabitants of the San Francisco Peninsula. As the indigenous stewards of this place, they've never ceded loss nor forgotten their responsibilities as the caretakers of this land. As guests, we who reside in their traditional territory recognize that we benefit from living and working on their homeland. We wish to pay our respects by acknowledging the ancestors, elders, and relatives of the Ramatush Ohlone, and by affirming their sovereign rights as First Peoples. So we have quite a few programs this month on the topic of food, and next Sunday in the Coret auditorium, which is just across the way here on the lower level, there will be a panel discussion on food cooperatives. So if you come to that, you'll learn how food cooperatives, at least since the 1960s, have been involved with food and justice movements as well as workplace democracy in the San Francisco Bay Area. There are library newsletters and flyers on the table over there as well as coffee and cookies, so feel free to help yourself at any moment. And so that ends my announcements of upcoming events. Now I'd like to turn the microphone over to Nazila Jamison of Nomadic Press, and Nazila will introduce today's readers. Please give a warm welcome to Nazila. Hello, everyone. Welcome to this lovely reading of a lot of my favorite poets. How y'all doing? You good? All right on. It's a lovely day for poetry. It's also a lovely day, so hopefully after this you'll get out into it because it's quite lovely. Our first reader. I love it when all my favorite poets come and read at the same time. It's a bonus. So our first reader received an MSW from UC Berkeley and MFA from Rutgers University. His work has appeared in Apogee, Anomaly, Ninth Letter, and the Ascentos Review. He was awarded the Alfred C. Cary Prize and has received fellowships from the Vermont Studio Center, Kanto Mundo, Community of Writers, Sarah Lawrence College, and the Lambda Literary Foundation. His debut collection, Angel Park, which came out in 2015, appeared on the LA Times list of 23 essential new books by Latino poets and was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award. He lives in San Francisco where he works as a social worker and editor-in-chief of San Cocho Press, a queer and trans Afro Latinx imprint with Corima Press. His debut album, Busy Cat, is now streaming on all major platforms. Please welcome the very lovely Robert F. Santiago. So is the theme food for this? Okay, well I don't write that much about food, but I have a few secret food poems that I will read for you. So I'll read something from the original collection, the original recipe, which was called Angel Park. And it's titled Collecting Spanishes. Hi. Abuelita's English was just like her bread pudding. Punctuated with raisins no one ever asked for. Condensed milk contradictions, fattening tenses, cinnamon questions, and eggshell. Bapi's Spanish was more like a group of poets workshopping, not overly concerned with agreement, and never without purpose. I don't ever remember him speaking in en-yes to me, but I loved him most when he spent all his accents on Mama. Mama's Spanish was slow-moving silkworms. She sometimes threaded stars into Greek myth and lullaby. Other times she tangled words into ivy, wrapping up a building brick by brick. Abuelo Spanish folds itself into English tea sandwiches. Cucumber and watercress covered in adobo y habichuela negra. I never tasted that recipe. He wasn't around often enough for them to be prepared, and something like that just doesn't keep well. So that was one food poem, and the rest don't really have that much food in them. It was weird to read that because it's been so long since I've read anything from Angel Park, but also one of my grandparents passed away recently, and I picked that poem, not realizing it was going to hit me in that moment. So this is a poem that is not like that in any way. This is from, like, Sugar, which came out recently, pneumatic prose, hey, hey, hey. And this one is titled Self-Portrait as a Boy in Nail Polish. That boy's sweet! Sweet like sugar should be, like mango gets. Sweet so sweet it gets caught between your teeth. Orange honey blossomed. Syrupy as agave is sweet, sweet enough to sugar the red out of some Kool-Aid. That boy got more than a little sugar in his tank. Sweet as flower bloom in morning dew, and the beauty seemed to say, it's a pleasure when you treasure all that's new. And true, and that boy Gania stabbed through a mojito, begging to lay in teeth. That boy folded hands and crossed legs, don't start none, won't be none. Sugar pie honey bunch! Sweeter than rainbow sprinkled buttercream. Sweeter than water ice or piraguas in July. That boy sweeter than a mug of hot cocoa and cinnamon, of marshmallow fluff or chata, of matcha sweet tea on ice, red velvet amaretto gelato. Sweet as lavender caramel mad lens. That boy Nutella whispered on the street corner in gay Paris. Maraschino cherries soaked in Pepsi, and candied raspberries after hot boxing up the coast. Burn your throat, he's so sweet. There's some edible things in that one. This one is titled, The Cavalier Nature of Electricity, or me salivating on the floor. Very, very subtle title. Whenever I'm in love, a warm animal scent lingers. Sweat and sandalwood, a top note of copper pans. The scent is so running water electric I think I might hurt myself. Or I'm sure of it. It's not normal in such a pity to be a fool foolish enough to love a man as I do. When he's near, I fixate upon the sweetest nothings, a daydream swelling above him as he lectures. I devour everything in the way his right hand rests on my left shoulder, a static jolting whenever he laughs and reaches over to rest his hand on my moment of skin. Each moment, a moment longer than the last, but never too long. Just long enough to prove that he's there and I hear. Ampers and atoms, fleshy opposable thumbs and a current that flows between us accountable animals. Us in his office, tearing me apart and jingling his jewelry, playing gold ring, smokeful and exuberant. The sluice, a current loose from me, burning his neck through the collar. Flesh feels better when it's taken, when people can see but pretend that they can't. That was a little bit sensual. When I wrote that poem, I took it to workshop and the workshop leader thought it was about them and it was not about them. They do wish. That being said, this next one is titled You Up. So, You Up. In the jet pitch of night, I refuse sleep and its lulling touch. With that devilry to swallow me whole, I'd grip it by the throat, from the inside. Each finger and arachnid of bent cigarettes tearing through flesh to get to a place where I might gather the means and materials to march across another. Oh, baby, not tonight. I don't wanna fuss and fight. I just want to make it right, but I'm a fool as I march towards the dawn letting loose bits of myself so that I can retrace my steps and recollect them inside myself for you. My neck and lips, tender thick with shine, a twitch, a flicker, a blink. A piece of paper stuck that I can't turn. Like Nebulae imploring, give me all your love and don't stop my love's waiting when you read the top. All night long, spreading gold-black through purple smoke, I will admit to being much less than advertised with my filthy hands and red face, but you only call me when you're lonely and need someone, not me, one. And I'm gonna, I'm gonna beg you to be human again when we're so close to the sh-t-t-t-t-t-t-do. Sh-t-t-t-t-t-t-do. And all you wanna do is get lit up and raised to the dirt. Have no fear. I don't practice what I preach. I have a fistful of stones and a pretty glass house. Inside is a love seat, swayed as starlight, upholstered moonful as licorice, black wet with nighttime talk like spit in the movies. But better than that, I get a big mouth and an urge to back it up. So come into my bedroom, honey, what I got will make you spend money all night long. And I need it while I'm young and neon enough to under-appreciate it. And you love it, you always do, until I get two liberal arts on you and ask one too many questions. So these little flags are not cooperating. So I have one and a half more. We'll see how I feel after this one. This one is titled, A Portrait of Petroclus. The shadow cast from a single lantern is not biblical, though it is indistinguishable in proportion. He is a symphony exploding slowly at first, in shifts and silently. A meticulously peddled crescendo brimming with vibration. His breath, a plie stolen from the blackness of Caravaggio. A merlot-lipped recitation of Kovafi under black lace. The black of scriptures that bleed when you touch them. Shadow black is the naked silhouette of an observer on his neck. His eyes, glister gold as river light. An expression old as the earliest form of wonderment. A pleasure, a seance. Gossamer white flame licked and split up the center. His vanilla abounds. A furrow roiling beneath the morning psalm of Achilles' horses. On his brow, a covenant with any creator willing to listen. The last one I'll do is a longer poem, but I'm just going to do the first part. It's a portrait of my mother as Nina Simone. I'll take a sip of water for this one. How's everybody doing? Portrait of my mother as Nina Simone. One. Love me, love me, love me. Say you do. Mona Lisa set adrift an obsidian rill. Vantablack and crystalline. The king sits bewitched at the dazzlement of her piano. Moon is in her breath trying to find the ocean looking everywhere. Singing to the sidewalk of stars, they come and go. Static is blackness. Blackness is bright, is smiling in the dark. Don't let them take me. Don't let them handle me. Drive me mad. Sedidily she trilled in an antique necklace of jaguar tooth and bone. A little girl jostling fro and to in a pastel clawfoot bathtub. Set in the center of a house, in the center of a parish, in the center of New Orleans. Wishing aloud for the rise of a sun. Oh, how they hide their faces as our cities die. Their eyes hide too. Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi, god damn. She ate for us to let candles burn slow, slow but hot. Wool-strong hips and mouth between worlds. Thank you so much. And apparently that's how you set it off. Thank you, Roberto. Roberto Santiago, y'all. So, uh-oh. Our next reader lives in Oakland, California. She has published multiple chat books and full-length books of poetry, two of which on Sunday a Finch and Collapse, both on Nomadic Press were nominated for California Book Awards. She has been nominated for six Pushcart prizes and was recently in the running for Oakland's first poet laureate. She has graced many stages, hosts the weekly writing workshop. On to six is co-host of the quarterly-themed reading series Moondrop Productions, host of the Badass Bookworm Podcast, and the Badass Bookworms Litloft. Her most recent book of poetry, A Pretty Little Wilderness, comes out on Be About It Press, June, and came out on Be About It Press in June of 2020. Please welcome our next lovely reader, Cassandra Dollett. So good to see all of you. That traffic was horrible, sorry. Is James okay? See, we don't know. Oh, okay, yeah. I wish I would have carpooled because we live close by each other. Um, anyways, I'm stoked to see y'all. I tried to think of food things, so let's see. See, I'm trying to give up bread to unknot my gluey gut, increase fiber, reduce gluten. So I wake every day with thoughts of the morning bun. It's round, soft layers rolled in sugar crystals. Not too sweet, but enough to stick to your lips. I'm also trying to give up the boy, but when the alarm rings, my first thoughts of lean limbs leading to hands that touch just where I want to be touched inside and out, kiss me, mouth watering, body starving. See, this is why I don't diet. On the plane, hot, hungover, deafened by nuts and bolts, shivering before mid-air collapse, he tells me that I sound like a mouse on a glue trap, caught in the act, but still squeaking. So I tell him that he sounds like the cat that's toying with the mouse, torturing the mouse, pulling off my whiskers and toes, but refusing to kill me or just leave me alone. A tear rolls from under my sunglasses. I'm sure the people in the seat behind can see me crying. I drop my head, exhausted, feel the salt burn through sweat and 24 hours of travel dirt. He reaches for me, feels sorry for his wounded, cheating mouse. Last night, the warmth brought us to the backyard where we jumped on the trampoline, howling, flying above high fences, peeking into neighbors' yards, holding each other, laughing, laughing. I think I peed myself before falling. We hugged and we kissed. Real happy kisses. It was, is the only cure for what ails us. The police copter came, the ghetto bird shined its spotlight on us, circled tighter and tighter. The sounds of Vietnam, Iraq, the streets of Oakland, but they can't arrest us for joy. That was a literal self-published mud pond. And this is from Collapse on Nomadic Press. You carry your flab, a scarlet F, on your chest, because some guy pointed at you coming out of the movie theater, squinting in the sunlight, brushing your popcorn littered shirt. Damn, she got fat. Says this guy who knows your ex-boyfriend. You did not ask for this to stick with you and your sucked belly and your plate glass reflection causing you to run into parking meters watching your chunky image mirrored. Or when another ex tried to convince you it wasn't his fault this ex was so bad. It was just, it wasn't used to being with someone so big. This is piled in your hurt locker of mom comments. Her reports on who lost weight, how great they look. She believes all problems solved thinner. When you are naked under adoring eyes, when you get naked milk to thirst, it mutes those voices, rubs them, salve on old scar, your thickness revealed and squeezed in a way that says, I have waited all my life to deserve as much woman as this. The moon lives inside me. The eggs still come, sad fallopian hands wave no more. So many obstacles, 15 years between us would be nothing if babies held easily to aging uteri, if we both hadn't suffered so much loss. Baby, the one pure thing I could give you, the one damned thing I cannot. I wonder if you truly understand how I saved myself over and over again, filling myself with blame, grabbed spit on rocks, thrown at me on the street by men, hands under my skirt, fists to my teeth just for saying, please don't touch me. I blamed only myself, my hoarse leather boots, cat suits, almost pushed the thing over, the types of men, bad neighborhoods, it was my fault when I hid fat lips, head down, sunglasses disguising the purple of bruise. What I wanted was simple. I didn't know it existed, had never seen man as friend, never been treated as a friend. Male friends I usually fucked first to get it out of the way. There were a lot of casualties. I swept up and carried with me a heart of scar tissue like the surface of the moon. Not very foody, but then again, food and sex. It's all the same. And from the most recent book, Pretty Little Wilderness, I chose some that I don't usually read. Bless up, this rain on the window behind our heads, hissing under tires in the distance, the day we never left the bed, the taste of chapstick from your lips, the kiss, the way we move towards each other, magnetized pieces of life in a bar, in a bed, in a crazed world, we keep returning to lock limbs. It was a rainy night when we met, a summer spent in each other's arms behind us, how we compared the emptiness of the summer before to the fullness of the one together, how we don't think about any of it too much anymore, let the cold tip of dog nose wake us, rough tumble of arms, legs and paws, smelling coffee in our memory foam nest, butter melting in morning skillet, filling the house with home, slow and familiar like molasses. I miss you and curse your stray hair in the shower, buy you afro pics to restore your halo. There are no deal breakers on our island. Sometimes philodendrons suffocate the redwoods, they adorn, but baby, they look good doing it. Extraordinary. I need cream of chicken soup for my cornbread dressing, but it lives next to cream of mushroom in the soup aisle. Thoughts of you live in its simple red and white label, my breath hitches at the sight of it, strange comfort you found in its cream and salt, I bought cases of it for you, so easy to please, all the ways I tried to soothe your body inside and out, cleaning out the bedside drawer, your driver's license, a tiny family picture of your med school graduation, the passport I wish we'd put to use and fled. I consolidate the drawers I gave you, clothes you haven't seen since they took you into custody, when everyone knows you should be in mine. Yes, that is the secret to a good cornbread dressing. In this wilderness, I wake up to house blinding. I can't see the sun. It's cold in this robe of fleece, no replacement. This, the longest heartbreak, I do all my usual tricks to get over it, late night tinder and then delete. Even with new useless man beside me, I am weak flesh all want, no patience. Baby, you know I never did. I met you like that. If this much contentment could come from one stupid hookup, why can't all the world revolve on that much chance, on that lonely impulse to set aside binge-watching and go out in the rain? I was binging when I met you, excuse me if I go astray. All the terrible things they say about dating, it's worse, people are terrible, all selfie sociopaths. I'm either ignoring your call or running out of the room to take it. I'm drinking my coffee, coffee for one. When I was 10 and we first had television, there were these commercials for the church of Latter-day Saints. It was a single woman in the city. She walked alone. She went to the movie ticket box. She said in a solemn voice, one please. Her singular, sorrowful finger raised. She walked through a storm of pigeons, fell onto an empty bed. Life in the big city, solo, in a crowd. I was 10. I wonder how many converts came from that one commercial. I search for it on YouTube sometimes. It vanished into spinster hood, I suppose. I never go to the movies alone. Abide. California Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections has made ants of us. Small cogs in huge wheels. They tell us what to wear, if we can touch, how we can interact and for how long. They have separated us, yet brought us closer. They are the test, the opposition, the ops, the cops. They cannot shatter us. We love hard. Two diamonds shining in the dark, shining on phone calls over recorded lines, over 300 miles, over lockdown and count time, over not enough money for packages, a writing block that is most persistent around letters. What do you say that you haven't said a multitude of times these years keep stacking up? Just not fast enough, my love. Thank you. Cassandra Dahlet, y'all. So, these are all displayed here so that you can go on nomadic press org and buy them. In case you didn't know. Just, you know. I like to be a giver of information. Our next reader is a poet, educator, hip hop scholar from Little Rock, Arkansas, currently living in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her previous work has appeared in storytelling, Self and Society, which came out on Wayne State University Press in 2018. Patrice Lumumba, an anthology of Writers on Black Liberation, which came out on Nomadic Press last year, and Essential Truths, the Bay Area in Color, which came out on Pease Press last year. She is the author of two chat books, The Body Has Memories and Collective Madness. Some of her favorite authors include Maya Angelou and Toni Morrison. When she is not writing, she is reading or watching documentaries. She also leads Healing Writing Circles for Black Writers. Please welcome Adrienne Danielle Oliver. Thank you, Nazala, and beautiful work, everyone, so far. I thought about doing a singing poem today, but it's like you guys both sung. I think that's enough. And I was looking for poems that had, like, a food reference in here, and they're not directly about food, but it's kind of like Where Is Wild? You can look for the food reference in these poems. So these first two poems are part of a four-part series, and everything's from The Body Has Memories. It's available on Nomadic Press. And the title of the poem is hashtag for a reason, a four-part, fill-in-the-blank poem for the overworked and underloved. And this is part two, hashtag for a reason unsettled. She is a limitless being, finding it safe under covers, indoors, listening to the homedrom of the news from the TV one floor down. The sound travels up through the thin wood between apartments, like a popcorn kernel, wedging its way between two tight molars rarely floss. The sound gets trapped between her ears. The building reminds her of TV portrayals of prison, the yard, the motel-like square that the apartments rest around create an echo chamber to compliment the inside sounds that seep through walls, floors. She survives the night only to face a morning window with power lines in view, gets dressed and walks out her front door, leans on the black railing that frames the walkway in front of each apartment. Looks down from her fourth floor apartment at concrete. She thinks it would have been a nice place for a garden. She lived in a house once, a field, a village, an open forest by a sea, a sky, a limitless grove of trees, green land. She never thought there'd be so much concrete in so little land, no cool green grass to snuggle between the creases of her bare toes, the stars twinkling the night. Now, all of her sweet things come in plastic of variant thicknesses and her fingers barely remember the prickly tremble of a fresh-picked strawberry from the earth. Thank you. Part three. Hashtag for a reason distressed. She is a limitless being. She has 25.43 generations to make up for because they ain't gonna give us no reparations, she says. And wonders what it'd be like to finally, after all these years, get her 40 acres in a mule minus the mule unless the mule is a high-power energy-efficient Tesla. In which case she'd sail to save up towards the acres. In San Francisco, she'll need $85,000, give or take, for a down payment on a plot of land. She has $85. And a hard-earned pension with the homework of delivering up retirement by age 59. She dreams of paying off her student loan debt and settling down with a nice credit score. 2.5 kids and that white picket-fenced budget. In this budget, she follows all the recommended ratios for living. The monthly rent-to-income ratio, the organic food-shopping-to-income ratio, the ratio to the ratio for this and that ratio, and of course the ratio to the ratio divided by the ratio and multiplied by the ratio. And living within the ratios helps her feed the piggy bank that constantly asks, does this make me look fat and purgous, no matter how much is reassured that a few pounds in there won't hurt. Her bank account has a bad case of bulimia, so she works overtime to convince it to keep its food down. Apple laptop, open atop the kitchen table, where dinner with friends could be. She eats takeout next to separate buckets for trash, recycling, and compost, and she hopes that making no waste is good karma. Wasting no time, she works until she falls asleep sitting straight up. In true Protestant fashion, she feels guilty forever clocking out. Food stamp line. Heart breaks in this place. I wait in line where the footprints tell me exactly six feet behind the person in front of me. I can't take my eyes off the cheap suit that greets me. I know good suits, not because I can afford them, but because I used to work for folks who could. Cheap suit gives me paper, pen, a clipboard to press on to make sure the social goes through the white, pink, and yellow. Waiting for my number to be called, I read a book. Ideas between shiny covers holding pages bound by thread and industrial glue. Supposedly to save my life. I sit here because words cannot feed me as much as chewing. Good intentions and ideas cannot comfort me as much as fullness in my belly. When my number is called, a strange smile greets me. I wonder what it feels like to be graced with a living smile, a parting of lips and a dancing of teeth rather than this ghost of one. The strange smile leads me to a cubicle, does not ask about my day, makes small talk about the weather. I walk behind her in silence, comforted by the assumption that she is doing fine like I am really not. Both our bodies occupying the space of 99%. That good government salary barely enough to pay her rent. We both walked into this building, carrying a weighted breath. Thank you. The life of a struggling artist. I know. I thought I would end on an up note sharing this poem, which also has a food reference. You can find it. For Mama Mari, and it's written in honor of Mari Evans, who published I Am a Black Woman in 1970. For Mama Mari, I am a black woman. I am from a long lineage of can do, of keep on keeping on of, you got this girlfriend. Where are my girlfriends? You got this girlfriend. I am not your escape, the one black friend that eases your very white conscious. I am from the former Confederate states of the U.S. African enslaving A. I can't be your forgetting. I am black tears, not cast before that swine. I am a black woman. I am a capital B, L, A, C, K, woman. Minus the L, A, C, K, K. I am a returning two. I am the original woman. I am free. I am not your magical Negro. Not your light skinned, easy to accept bay. I am not masses homecoming. I am not fixing your dinner, rocking your cradle, or wet nursing your white guilt. And I am not leading that soul train line at your eggnog party. And no, you can not. I repeat, cannot. Shant not. Touch my hair to see how it feels between your white hands. I have crossed that Mason-Dixon line and made my hair my own field. I am a black woman. Please pronounce my name right and put some respect on it. I am from Aretha Franklin. Patty LaBelle on a high note. Tina Turner on her way out the door. I am not your punching bag and I will not eat the cake. I am a black woman. Thank you. Adrienne Oliver, y'all. Just so you know, that whole don't touch my hair thing isn't just for white people. That's everybody. When in doubt, just don't. I am so, wow, such good poetry on a Sunday afternoon, y'all. Such good poetry. And my friends. So, you know, na na na na na. Our next reader was born in the Chihuahuan desert. Raised on a stingray in Ventura and moved to San Francisco in 1980 when he was 22. Served in the Peace Corps where he began writing during a civil war in Guatemala and returned to the Bay Area and received an MA in creative writing from San Francisco State where his teaching career began. His work has appeared over 300 times in journals such as Carve, Bull, Flashback Fiction, McQueen's Quinterly, Riddled with Arrows and the Disappointed Housewife, and has received Editor's Choice Awards, a Publishers' Choice Award, and Best of the Net nominations. He is the author of five books, including Nova Nights from Nomadic Press, and Nomadic will be publishing his sixth collection translated from the original One-Inch Punch Fiction which is One-Inch Punch Fiction this December. He writes a float in Richardson Bay and walks the planks daily. And when he says a float, he means a houseboat. All y'all are jealous. Please welcome our next reader, Mr. Guy Bederman. Hi, everybody. Cassandra's read on the houseboat. It's... Yeah, it's... We used to do floats in salons there in the pandemic hit, so we'll be getting back to it hopefully. But I want to thank San Francisco Public Library and Nomadic Press, Nazila, for the event, and everybody for being here. And it's really a privilege and an honor to be here and to read with you all. So, thank you. I'd like to share a couple of pieces that'll be coming out in translated from the original in December. This first one's called Tomato. In Search of the Perfect Tomato, Lou hits the farmer's market on Sunday. The heirlooms are extravagant. One purplish green monstrosity is on the grotesque side. He examines it closely, pulls back, feels the farmer's staring, and realizes the old guy resembles his tomato the way sometimes people resemble their dogs. How much for one? Lou hopes for expensive? It'll be easy to say no. He remembers the cherry tomatoes his mother grew and ate from the vine, tossing one to the big German shepherd, Francis, who politely swallowed it and waited for another. One dollar, says the farmer, not wanting to offend or appear miserly. Lou forks over a buck and takes the tomato home, thinking grilled cheese and tomato sandwich. But when he slices the heirloom, he forgets all about the sandwich and the farmer and how the tomato looked. In one exquisite bite, Lou savors the taste of summer, this summer, which is all the summers of his past. Yeah. Thank you. This is called Edible Grace. How do we know a fact is not also a fiction, a poem not also a prayer? I'm pushing a cart down the and or aisle of Stoner's Mind Store and discover just what I need. Miscellaneous warnings and advice in bulk. I scoop them into a brown paper bag and instantly they become a quandary. My twin who has come along questions this, which is her right and which she always does. So we proceed to the front, which could also be the back and ask the fact checker who moonlight said Salvador Dali's deli, famous for the world's tiniest sandwich so small it could fit in a matchbox, but so dense no one can lift it. So this leaves us with our quandary, a collective noun undefined. An octopus, by the way, has three hearts and eight tentacles with minds of their own. Imagine the poetry an octopus could write, multiplied by eight. Imagine the pencils alone. Our fact checker rings us up and asks if we want a receipt. We assure them we've had nothing to drink and we're pretty sure it's a fact. At the care facility we find a diminishing friend and a mistaken for a patient. In a heartbeat I sign out the front door and go for a bike ride in the breezy afternoon under a sky so blue just to prove I'm not. The jury's still out. So I write this poem and I pray my twin fits her shadow exactly into mine and for a moment we are one with eight tentacles but only two hearts and the need to dissect back in prayer means less than a tiny sandwich we can't eat. When in doubt we make cookie dough and lick the beaters is any art more beautiful than chocolate chip cookies baking in an oven. Any truth greater than the sweet aroma filling the house. Edible grace our ticket to the sun. Yeah. There are a couple of fun dating stories. So I'll share this one. This will also be in the next one. It's called Jane. It started with a fake name at Starbucks. Harry, I told the barista. Destiny. Gary, she asked. No, Harry. I watched her write H-A-I-R-Y. On the paper cub with a sharpie. Harry was an old man's name. A name that belonged to a different generation like Walter or George or Dick. Wait. Was I old now? And Harry? I paid for my double decaf answering my own question as usual without any help. All that day I used fake names. At the dry cleaners I was Johann. At the dog park with my sister's Corgi, I was Rolf. On a blind date that night I became Cam with a K, I said making that part up on the fly to the woman, Jane. Or was it Frida? Most people stretch the truth about income, health benefits, age. For me it was all about the name. And after the second scotch I fessed up. Jane looked at me kind of funny and I could see in her eyes there was no going back. Not to the truth. Not to the first hug. Not to her place. Or mine. Pity I was into her. A poet who liked black label war high boots named Jane. She asked for our check before dessert from the waiter, Paolo pulled out cash for a little over half the amount I could see she liked to tip after tax. I'd like to call you again at such a good time. What's your last name, Jane? She closed her small black purse flashed a fading smile. Dough. This is from Novenites. It's called soup. How do you get any work done around here S.D.D.? Easy, I say. I call what I do work. That peanut butter sandwich? That poem at 3 a.m. The vase with the $5 bouquet freshened up each day that keeps on giving. I'm swimming in a bowl of soup. If I want a carrot, a noodle, a chunk of chicken I open my mouth. No lines between pleasure and work and art and chicken noodle. Morning light comes through the stained glass vase on the sill. Standing at the stove this is as close as I'll ever get the church. This is my religion. This envelope I'm writing on my hymnal. Words become song and salvation and I lose all track of time mere handwritten movements on a watch I don't own. Work is what we do every second of each eternal day. Soup is a poem. Also dinner. A friend of mine Linda Saldana had a friend who bought this book and read that poem and I don't know the person but they were so moved by that poem they wrote a poem to my poem and it was an extraordinary experience I have to say I'll never meet her and I read the poem but it was kind of like the two poems were having a dialogue with each other separate from the writers and I just thought that was very, very cool. I'd like to close with actually one that is straight from the mole skin. Yeah. SES It's dedicated to Penelope Chloe Fernandez Biedermann my three and a half year old teacher. The epiphany arrived over toasted English muffin as Penny and I made smiling faces on a buttered surface with sliced strawberries. This is what I wanted to do. This is how I could spend the rest of my days making strawberry faces having three year old fun savoring the wonder reveling in the joy of such moments aware that what's out there the poems to be written the stories to publish the books to promote and sign the bills to be paid the readings to attend the bed to make the games to watch the philosophy to ponder the to-do list to check off the gym work to get done the speed bag to punch the oatmeal to stir the tickets to pay replacing ripe farmers market berries on top of an English muffin laughing at our discoveries smiling to each other smiling at the face we had made the muffin smiling back as we floated in our kitchen table joy. Thanks everybody. Guy Biedermann everyone we had one more reader who has not joined us quite yet so I want to give him at least a few more minutes to join us so I was going to do a couple poems if that's all right I'm trying to stick to theme this is called cannibal in church we ate God every first Sunday or rather we ate the body of his son our lord and savior Jesus Christ washed him down with great flavor blood went home in the afternoon and chewed upon the actual flesh of the dead nonholy I grew up country poor we only shopped in grocery stores for canned tornado food and milk our farmer relatives fed us I spent late summer snapping beans and shelling peas for freezing the first days of after school was cleaning freshly rung chickens by spring we were usually down to hogs had cheese and fat back sandwiches by summer dinner was grits and fried canned tomatoes God bless slaughter season when I was seven I once had a pet chicken it was then that I learned the meaning of life when I came home from school and she was silently on my plate her cage and my belly were both empty hunger eclipsed my righteous indignation God is great, God is good let us thank him for this food vegetarianism is a religion personalized by city-dwelling atheists and rich folk it is an elite western ideology attractive to those with no immediate fear of starvation consumers of billboards and articles and philosophies drinkers of smug self-righteousness to wash down the multivitamins when the rice cakes were not enough humans at their basis to eat what is edible country Christians eat by the bible Jesus gave the people fish invited us to eat his flesh basically said fill your belly with what I have available to you I am no longer Christian but I eat what is available to me my hunger eclipses your politics perhaps I am wrong maybe my country grandmothers and aunties lived to their late 90s in spite of hog moths and pig knuckle sandwiches and mother earth would prefer if we set domesticated food animals free to overpopulate and die from mass starvation though what I do know though is pita protesters are made of meat when the last animals have gone to when this earth inevitably transitions when crops dry up and blow away when the last animals have gone to slaughter due to famine and waste when there are no more chickens there will be vegetarians I will fill my belly with what is available to me hunger eclipses everything and transform saints into saviors and so I'll do this one more this isn't about food this is I guess an after dinner thing the thing you do after dinner right this is called pick me up coffee is unsurprisingly beautiful it's rich taste and aroma filling my head with exquisite wakefulness quickening and warming my heart in hand oh generous lover nudging me out of bed each morning for longing to get to you dancing melodically on my tongue tingling my nervous system your grind motivates me to get up and greet the sun clear-eyed and ready loving caffeinated cup promise you will always be there waiting for me at the cafe up the street sweet and strong you lift me make me believe I can make it through my day and my tomorrows will always begin with you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you And my name is Nazila and thank you all for being here. Have a good evening, night, afternoon, life, do other things.