 Hello and welcome everyone. Thank you for coming to this month's special edition of Poem Jam, Celebrating Women's History Month. I'm John Smalley, and I'm a librarian at the General Collections and Humanities Department on the third floor of the Main Library, where you are. While we're waiting for a few more people to join us, I want to take a moment to acknowledge our community and to tell you about a few of our upcoming programs. On behalf of the Public Library, we wish to welcome you to the unceded and sussed-for homeland of the Ramatush Sholoni people, who are the original inhabitants of the San Francisco Peninsula. As the indigenous stewards and in accordance with their traditions, the Ramatush Sholoni have never conceded, lost nor forgotten their responsibilities as caretakers of this place. As guests we who reside in their territory recognize that we benefit from living and working on their traditional homeland. We wish to acknowledge the Ramatush and pay our respects by acknowledging the elders, ancestors, and relatives of the Ramatush community, and also by affirming their sovereign rights as First Peoples. As you may know, April is National Poetry Month just around the corner, and the, perhaps I should ask first, are there people who are not from San Francisco here? Oh, quite a few. First-timers, all right. Well, this event here is part of our monthly Poem Jam Poetry Reading series. There's about two million books in this building, seven floors. If you live in California, you're eligible for a library card. There's about 60 or so 70 databases, including streaming music, streaming film, poetry, audio books. All of that is accessible to you. You can get a card. It just takes one minute on the first floor, and then you can access our databases from wherever you live in the state of California. Just FYI. We have lots of programming pretty much every day of the year. And here in this building, we, in April, we're going to have our department is sponsoring about eight such programs in the month of April. I'll just mention a few of the highlights. On April 2nd, we are going to have a program called Echo's Poets in Memoriam, honoring poets who died in the last three years. On April 16th, the Sunday, we're having a program featuring the new California State Poet Laureate, Lee Herrick. So please come back for that if you're in the area. And rounding out the month in April 30th, we'll have a poetry program called The West Revisits Harlem, and that will be facilitated by San Francisco's current Poet Laureate, Tongo Iza Martin. There's also other programs. If you want to learn more, please do stop by the table and pick up a library newsletter or the flyers from various things. We also have a limited poem jam pin. So you can pick those up from the table or perhaps one of the designers will pass those around. You can take that as a memento. To quote the Filipino poet Vince Gutera, April is the coolest month. So I should mention this program is part of the library's more general Celebration of Women's History Month. And this poetry reading happens on the second Thursday of each month. Another way you can learn about it is just visit our website, sfpl.org. So that's all of my announcements. I now wish to turn the microphone over to Kim Shuck, the Poet Laureate Emerita of San Francisco, and Kim will introduce tonight's readers. Please give a warm welcome to Kim Shuck. Wow. Oh, I see some people I have not seen in a while. This is exciting. This room is not usually quite so full on Poem Jam Night. So thank you for going. I have some great poets to share with you tonight. The first of whom, who is just so incredibly special, she's got to go run off and do another reading. And I agree, I'm not being sarcastic. Naseela Jameson, I believe we met first at a nomadic press release party, if I'm not mistaken. She's one of the people, I just love having her introduce me. And to explain that, people who organize and host poetry events are kind of a special group. We almost never get paid to do it. It's a labor of love. We do this basically to share time with people we want to hear at a microphone, hearing pieces of their heart that they've fully laid out for you and kind of laid out on the page. And I think a lot of people in the community know Naseela as a host. But I'm a huge fan of her poetry, and I have been for some time now, and you're about to find out why. Can you please welcome Naseela Jameson to this microphone. I wanted to write this poem, but I was too busy trying to live. Hard to hold a pen when one is holding one's breath. I run everywhere I go, busy paper chasing, dream chasing, chasing myself. And the men who cat call me say, baby, why don't you slow down? To which I say, to them and to myself, be worthy and keep up. I'm so busy getting over and becoming, trying to show up and occupy space in a world that treats me like a shadow. You call it black girl magic. I call it cramped manicured fingers, shopping skills and makeup prowess in between the struggle. Because on the rare occasion you ever happen to notice me holding your world together, I will always look good doing it. I try to set an example. I keep moving these mountains, rebuilding these bridges, attempting to be the superglue cementing the black American dream. Busy trying not to die in a society apathetic to me. I am here, busy remaining, living, growing, transforming, standing proudly, black and nappy, from ongoing trial by fire and perpetual birthing and rebirth. I have a few poems. I'll read a few poems. It's women's month. I like women, right? Awesome. That's lovely. That's not quite the enthusiastic response that I've sought, but here's a poem. This is called Receipt. This is what you get for wearing a short skirt, a low cut blouse, tight jeans, any jeans, black tights, a cable knit sweater, a hijab, a burka, your skin. This is what you get for smiling, not smiling, making eye contact, talking back, not speaking, walking too fast, walking too slow, walking alone, showing fear, showing no fear, showing up, screaming, not screaming. This is what you get for being pretty, being butch, being fat, being skinny, being young, being confident, being quiet, being awake, being alive, being there, being. This is what you get for being a lover, a fighter, a girl, a woman, female. Do you get it? You will spend your whole life getting it. You will never not get it until the day they realize you can give as good as you get, so they better get while the getting is good. This is how to kill a phoenix. Smother her in a sodden, flame retardant blanket, drown and suspend her in her own tears, slice off her wings and bury her under bullshit, choke her with fattened lies and frustration, starve her for affection. Cut her with razor sharp tongue and watch her bleed dry. Tell her she is nothing until she believes you. Push her off a cliff and convince her she is falling in love. Freeze her with neglect and abject cruelty. Beat her with insults until she is senseless. Be sure to eliminate all hope and other combustible materials. Lock her away in a windowless prison and swallow the sun so she sees no point in resurrection. This is called alchemy. And when he breaks you this time, like a brittle riding crop across the back of a wild old beaten horse, pick up the pieces of your liberty and run. When he shatters the transparent fragile parts of you, which make you open to love and beautiful tragedy, toss the shards high into the air of your darkest night and call them stars. When he dashes your hope into splinters, sweep them into a pile, pretend they are feathers and glue them to your back. When he fractures your essential boundaries and devotion, mosaic your heart into an exquisitely compelling living sculpture. And when he breaks you, again, this one last time, realize you are whole even when broken. You are a perfect jigsaw puzzle, not a pretty frame destructible picture. Gather and recreate yourself, defiantly new. So here's a poem. I have two more poems. This poem is a poem to Eve. When punk-ass Adam thought that his rib was just enough to sustain an entire other human being, you smiled. When God tempted your hunger for a snack with the sweetest tree in the garden, you generously shared with your only companion, and God loved to watch you walk away. Who first taught this world to hate women? To want to crush us and make us dependent? Ponder that thought, dear Eve. As you choke on the ball gag you always wear underneath your burka. Let us consider our worth. 75 cents on the dollar in the USA, but in some Asian countries they pay through the nose to have someone's son carry their daughter away. Not to mention the rich female baby fertilizer. Girls make the flowers grow. Oh Eve, we are here for so much more than the fucking, or the cooking, or the children. Oh how they have disrespected their vessels of life. Keep us on the floor so they are always above us, though they constantly come up short. We have survived by being the bigger person. How else could we incubate all civilizations, raise and nurture all the children? Carry the massive weight of a man's misgivings. You have passed down your ability to make a home from a desert, to make a feast from an apple. You worship the men in your life. They threw you a bone and you became a goddess, forced to reluctantly walk away. I enthusiastically left his punk ass yesterday. I am learning. So this is my last piece. This is for me, but also for any woman who has ever felt less than. This is a poem to my mirror. For the chocolate kiss, melting alone on a hot summer sidewalk, because he claimed to like me a palatin, but his favorite flavor was actually not you. For mocha ice cream dripping sadly over the edge of the tub, after he fucked you only late night and never called again. For when he rejected your well done ass because you could not be rare and bloody enough. For full shelves of dust covered tins of rich cocoa and waiting lists for butterscotch and vanilla extract. For you black girl crying inside when he told you he prefers Jewish girls because they smell like strawberries. Standing outside of his life because you aren't pretty enough to take home to his color struck mother. For you mahogany ebony onyx phoenix onyx panther. You are the foundation upon which galaxies are suspended sun swallower and color fusion initiation and conclusion of everything. Omnipotence is no consolation will not rescue you from the tower of loneliness you have come to call home. But go on paint your eyelids sunrise and your lips bright coral. Adorn your fingertips with passion fruit and your toenails with blackberry wine. Wrap yourself in molten lava and be a volcano. Be the universe. Encompass the world and let that tide you over for now. Thank you. You cannot say I didn't warn you. I believe it was yesterday that I saw that South Carolina has a bill up making abortion a capital offense for the women. Their timing is impressive. South Carolina is where my dad's people originally come from. And we did get shifted across the continent. And I just wanted to say something about that before I introduce our next poet. Breakers of invasion crash and scatter. Some are caught in the tides the borders that violate sense and custom our criminal presence. And the pounding of colonization the poet who read about the safety of an earlier time when a quick settler could sell my skin for a bounty. Along with a wolf skin a coyote skin and tell me who was safe with our lives a form of theft. The borders that violate prayer and tradition sliced through families as surely as a sail down the river. How long can you live cut like any other noun from the important connections. The naval of the world is still off limits. The umbilical both severed and torn and forced still by military law. And we're moved on by new borders that breathe like the waves that have heaved and spit new borders and new borders of unwieldy greed. And for anybody thinking I'm being a little too heavy I decided not to read anything from my murdered and missing women book tonight. Oh just consider yourself blessed. You know I knew how to say your name again until about two seconds ago. This is terrible. This is really an excusable. Aliza Sallison has a new book out and was one of those poets. I like to think I know who most people are in the poetry scene in the Bay Area. And I think that I'd only known you as an organizer of you know with Sarah and with Colossus Press who if you don't know it you should look at that. And I loved your work the last time I heard you. I'm really glad you're here. Please welcome Aliza. Thank you so much Kim. So I've been even on the bar right over here with Sarah going back and forth about what I'm going to read tonight. So I'm still not entirely sure. And I don't know I either they're not specifically women's history poems but they're all all my work is about the you know the the labor and the love that that we as women or women identifying folks engage in daily. So I'm going to start by reading. I think most of what I'm going to read is from my chapbook if not all of it. All right so let's start with prose poem for Sal. It wasn't until later when Bob Holman told me that Pedro Pietri died of stomach cancer on his flight from Mexico to New York that I began to reiterate about how we got you onto that airplane. Did I carry you from behind holding up the weight of your body with my own careful not to further break your broken back. Or did you cling around my neck my body your life preserver down that narrow airplane aisle. Does it matter. Somehow we carried you through the terminal and down the endless boarding tunnel to seat nine B. Amanda brought up the rear with all of the pillows and gear necessary for a dying poets last journey. It wasn't until later when Bob Holman told me that Pedro Pietri died on his flight from Mexico to New York that I remembered those moments with you in the men's room of the Guadalajara Airport. When you announced you finally had to take the shit you hadn't taken in weeks. And I brought you to the only stall the one with no door heaved you onto the toilet and turned my head to allow the Mexican men that came into P their privacy while you had none. Your shit was a false alarm. But I wiped you nonetheless for which the peeing Mexican men allowed us our privacy. And I worried for the remainder of the journey that the shit would arrive at 30,000 feet and what would I do then. It wasn't until later when Bob Holman told me that Pedro Pietri died on his flight from Mexico to New York that I allowed myself to feel those stretches of silent terror. When we thought you might already be dead. There you were in the middle bulkhead seat slumped over the pile of pillows we'd placed in your lap because you could not sit upright. And it seemed like your breathing had slowed to its final stop. In those moments I debated with myself about what I'd do if it all ended over Mexico, over Arizona, Nevada, or in the long descent to SFO. Would I call for help or sit quietly until landing until every passenger deplaned before gently telling the flight attendants that we'd need more help than expected to remove you from their aircraft. It wasn't until later when Bob Holman told me that Pedro Pietri died on his flight from Mexico to New York that the words of the Mexican doctor came back to me. Por supuesto they'll let him on the airplane. This is Mexico. It will be hours until the blonde Highland Hospital ER doctor will look into your hungry eyes and announce that you have a tumor the size of a baseball in your chest to which you will respond. I was a great poet. Just remember, I was a great poet. But for now, I slip you extra pain pastillas. I sigh into this cesura and order two more shots of free airplane tequila. This is Mexico, both for me. So next up, this is another prosy kind of piece, guns and monks. This is a little later on in the story. The person that I carried back from Mexico was my uncle. He was a poet and he did well. A lot of the chat book is based around that. Guns and Monks. Today I read Sal two letters. One from his young internet love and the other from the ex-wife that he hadn't spoken to in 30 years. They both made him cry with longing and regret. Many notes, poems and letters are coming in now. I've been printing them all out and putting them in a binder that people who visit can read to him. Mostly me as he doesn't have anyone else other than a social worker. He is proud to be getting so many messages and poems from around the world. Some from people that never met him but knew his work. But this pride is mixed with sorrow about running away from everyone for so long. Now he doesn't want to run. Many tears today. His anguish is incredibly deep. Earlier I spoke on the phone with the old friend that is in possession of my Buddhist and pacifist uncle's AK-47. Well, Sal isn't the actual owner because the FBI wouldn't let him take possession due to the felony pot bust back in 68. So his friend and union co-worker Chuck, who is the official owner of Sal's high-power firearm, is the official owner of Sal's high-power firearm. There's a long and complicated story that goes with the AK-47 which ends with Sal being run out of the county where he was living prior to going to Mexico. Chuck wanted to fill me in on the true story of the gun just in case others presented the sensationalist but incorrect telling that paints Sal as a potential murderer. Sal now has a Tibetan monk in Nepal praying for him, the unionized workers in heaven standing at the ready for his organizing skills, and another old love offering to pay his medical bills since she has reportedly lived frugally all her life and has quite a substantial sum saved away. Not bad for a reclusive poet. I am tired. Fine cracks spread across my body. Strain seeps to my outside. I am parched. But I do not crack. I hold together. Choiceless, I hold together. Tired, I hold together. Monks offer prayers if only they can be found. This is low tide. I stand on sand hard and wet. Wide beach, vast waterwashed plain, scrubbed by wind, punctured by rocks, worn to round. Hundreds of half buried seaside spheres. They're fractured skins like spider web bound orbs, rasped by dogged sun by wave after insistent wave. And I wonder if their fissures will hold through the oncoming storms. This fragile stasis, rock, wind, tide, sun, verses my headstrong desire to find gold in the darkest blue. Kneeling in the sand, I dig one cleaved rock from its salacious nest. In a singular motion, I pry and lift as its surface crumbles away. As rock skin and gut release, leaving behind a tiny seashell, now cupped in my palm. This bared heart cone, fray of my human longing. She has lost everything, all her possessions, her books, her papers, her car and home, all physical evidence of her living gone. She has lost everything except for a dead cell phone and her children. It is catharsis and she buys strawberry ice pops from the vendor on the shore, a necessary treat after the harrowing journey. Moments before she had scrambled her son and daughter to the safety of the sand. This beach, and they watched their sailboat, already missing its bow, swept out into the sea and destroyed, along with houses, massive buildings, an entire land swallowed by the black heaving mountains of water that still glimmer in the moonlight, a terrifying beauty. She is surprised at the calm strength that allowed her to pull the broken vessel ashore. Alone with her children, out on the water in a boat that she could not steer nor control, setting sail to an unknown destination in spite of the ominous clouds on the horizon. She should have understood the danger. A good mother, a safe mother would have known better. But she was tired of wandering. She was ready to leave. She knew there would not be a map. And thank you. I have one more poem and this is called Want. From the beginning, I am told, I want is never a good enough reason for anything. Words etched into my ribs, words holding an almost airless fire, a slow burn, husked hollow hunk of matter. This is how my body becomes dust. Yet today, the tulips on the windowsill curl toward light and heat with instinctive want. The tulips curl into tendrils, into echoing lions of time, their dousing and divining tell me, close your eyes and dive into the deep end of clouds, where water moves through air, where want swirls and somersaults. The tulips curl into my future self. I see her there, walking the hills, old woman with glasses hazed by breath. I watch her move through translucence, the path unclear. I watch that old woman stop and stretch arms toward her wild and solid self as she calls out, this life, this life is not what I expected. Her perfect mammalian ghost roar, her desire. Thank you. So a couple of you have asked the question, asked questions about what poetry is and what is inspiring. Sarah Beale and I met each other working on a benefit after the love he breaks in New Orleans. And I talk sometimes about writing the things we need. Well, a whole bunch of us got together and wrote health care and benefit for the health clinic that was in the ninth ward in New Orleans. And it was really successful. Sarah and I are coming up on, I think we're at 18 years of putting our shoulders against one another and doing the important things. And I just love that you're here. Please welcome Sarah Beale. So I thought I'm going to read mostly from my chapbook, Prescribed Burn, which is pretty new. Pretty new. Just a couple of weeks old. Yay, Brooke. Yeah, I have some with me if anyone wants them. And Elisa has some of her book too. So I thought today I would start with a poem from my mom. This is called Losing Our Language. I want to say something. I mean, do something. Pull her back in the way the sound of a bell calls children from a schoolyard or white cotton twine wraps into a ball, drags a kite back through edgy wind. She tells me there is something, but she means was something. Now it hides like a pearl inside a prayer, the true need unnamed, a leftover wish loose and flying tucked behind my ears as I run for the wheezing morning bus. I try to remember something. No, to actually choose something to hold like a breath or a beam of light from a half closed door. A forgotten brightness so inviting, shadows shake themselves and sulk in the corners to wash like cats. I want to explain something or maybe just touch something. The way temporary language sings in wires stretched between our cavernous hearts. The way our greetings are flocked in missing and decorated with a weary cringe. I need to break something, but I mean find something look straight down the long hallway past every random cruelty and be soothed. By the way, time can sway like a kelp forest when you notice only the golden flecks floating in the sunwarm sea. So this next poem is Prescribed Burn. It began in a mix of soil and salt, a fire set in my stillness. I don't like to think about the windows shattered, the poison I pushed downstream. Most of me came home, came awake, lips bruised in a crush of fear, skull sore from collisions and silent sobs, hair knotted and torn, a messy convenience in his furious grip. A handle to twist and drag, me stumbling dumb, shuffled in disbelief from block to block. That morning, miraculously alone, I slid into the stained bus seat, tires tucked in tears. I breathed fully for the first time in far too long. My bitter tongue swollen with unnamed crimes, dates and times, deceptions and dares, lines drawn and crossed left choking on the curb. Blood gathered against my skin, stained all the places his fingers gripped, blooming badges of dishonor. But I wrenched free, slipped his mother's ring off my finger, couldn't watch as it bounced in the rainy roadside gravel. Sometimes a door needs to slam before it can close, sometimes they burn fields so something new might grow. So this is the day after. The day after the fire, we held hands under the table, dreamed the same dream when we slept. I talked to your mother for the first time. She made French toast, generously lent me socks. So this next poem is one of the poems that's going to be in Colossus's next book, which is called Colossus Body, and hopefully will be out and in the world in late May, early June. It's hard to figure out how quickly things will get printed in the publishing world. But it is called Colossus Body, and all of the funds from selling copies of Colossus Body will be donated to Keep Our Clinics. So this is unborn. Yeah, yay, Keep Our Clinics. We need them. Unborn. Unwanted, unlucky, unwed. Unknotted, unscripted, unsaid. Unburdened, unbidden, unbrushed, unbroken, unbridled, unjust. Unfolded, unfinished, unmade. Unlawful, unbalanced, unpaid. Unblemished, unaltered, unarmed. Unbuckled, unbridled, unharmed. Unbounded, unbuttoned, undone. Unwoke, unspoken, unwoken, unwon. Uncommon, unstable, undressed. Uncertain, unquiet, unrest. Unwelcome, uncivil, unsaid. Unlikely, uncommon, unread. Unending, unable, untold. Unopen, unsettled, unsold. Unscripted, unrivaled, unworn. Unbitten, unblemished, unborn. Unseemly, unkind, uncoiled. Untitled, unsigned, unspoiled. This next poem is called Witness, and it's a cinto. And a cinto is a poem that is like a collage of other poet's lines. And it's a great way if you have like lines from poets you know or poets you are friends with and love that you can sort of weave those lines together into something new. So this is called Witness, and it's a cinto for us. I'm writing to you because there has been a death. A few pains cut deeper, but the power is there to see with an almost gruesome beauty. The only sign of her departure was a small gathering, loitering outside the palace bar and grill as if candles shone, unflickering. I cannot tell you how I felt. There were so many eyes. Self-blame comes easily, is bare, almost flagrant in the wind. How utterly helpless we are. I wondered if she watched herself dissolve. I'll read two more. It's good that books have tables of contents. Winter nest, patient, unconcerned, hums along with growling morning traffic. Her time is a different animal, wholly other from the distracted human clutch. She watches milky clouds, tendrils that stretch across daybreak, sympathetic and satisfied with their expanse. She gives her hours in gratitude to the borrowed bones, the possibilities of being. Potent as a cup palm, she wears all the softest shades, woven from the shadows of the dream-filled earth. When moved, she chants in harmony with morning doves, a dedication to the wisdom, the tenacity of thorns. Her incantations float a Kimbo, heedless to the confidence of gravity, their echo and embrace, and anchor that she delves into solitude. She understands her search, can predict her missteps, she spent years reimagining the leftovers, discovering again the value in what she's already had. Her core is burnished from this industrious cycling, all the coming and going, all the offering and accommodation. This is what she celebrates perched in the petulant wind. This is her gift from the proprietor of clarity, vision beyond our brash mechanistic borders. She is patient as she waits for a season to dream for herself. Thank you. And I thought I would end with a poem for one of my daughters, my older daughter. Being, we are steeped in quiet, folded in sheets and blankets, and you, small bean, so complete in your sleep, your pink hat pulled to meet your downy eyebrows, breathe in the even light of dawn. Our first morning is outside. Today, the world is broken open. Every cell sings. Thank you. So if you missed that, these two women have new books. Sarah is a publisher of books that the sale of which gets donated to different things, and there have been two of them, and the third is on its way. Colossus is worth looking into for that reason. I'm trying to decide whether I'm going to read somebody's work who's not here. Instead, I'm going to say this. I had planned to have one more poet here, but the storm actually flooded where she was living, and in order to sort of find a new place to live, the first place that arrived was actually in New York, not here, so she is currently on the east coast. But I would suggest you look into Mia Byrne, and if you look into Mia Byrne, what I find is that she's a country music superstar. She also writes poetry, and I love her work very much, so that's definitely worth doing. There is a way that I sometimes have introduced this next poet that she doesn't like, so I won't do it this time. But I will say this. On one side of the family, I'm Polish, and on the other side of the family, I'm Cherokee, and people are generally much more interested in the Cherokee. This poet is the first poet in San Francisco I ever heard say anything in Polish, in a poetry reading, and it's just, it endeared you to me in a big, big way. I love her work. We don't get to see each other half often enough, but between the education you do with people in music and the space you hold for poetry in this city, this is a remarkable woman, so please welcome Clara Sue to this microphone. Hi everyone. I'm going to read one poem, and I'll tell you why. I have two children, a son and a daughter, one being the first, the daughter second, and she's awfully jealous of her brother. My son doesn't read poetry. My daughter doesn't read poetry either, but for a very, very long time, whenever I finish a poem, she would be the first person I'd read it to. So that was really nice. So when I wrote a poem for my son, I know I have to do something to make sure that my daughter feels that she is love. So since they don't read poetry, the only way I can show it is to give her the length. So this poem is for my daughter, and it's called The Juliet, and it starts with a quote from Homer. Of August gold wreathed and beautiful Aphrodite, I shall sing. August night, the womb sheds a replica. She grew, already grown, set honoree on a Chinese chest, kicking the elaborate carved surface of languid women in an ancient garden. Long arms, thin legs, she could not say the alphabet. Big tears, tight fists, she only knew one plus one equals. The sum of yum, sweet chrysanthemum, spung in a white dress when she felt the blues was well known for group fights in school, wrestled boys, pinned them down, never refused a challenge, wrote rivers of words behind closed doors. Only her pat-rat could read them. In time, she learned to please did laundry dishes when she needed money to spree. With wobbly footing in yin and yang, she declared, I want the part. Pumped abdomen 200 times a day, clipped eyebrows into neat twin crescents, painted red fingernails and purple toenails, went to all her classes, smiled brilliantly, continuously. Notice me. With every ounce of energy, she twirled and whirled and stretched and leap. I want to be prima ballerina. They smiled back. Lovely girl, worked so hard. Such expressions and confidence, she could really do the part. The buzz was on meekly at first. I'm it. I'm it. And then like a breeze, it swelled from dressing room into the hall booming. She's it. She's it. Ever heard teenage girls scream? Hugs and kisses followed by tears, a drop or two. Mom, she turned, eyes bursting with lights. Suddenly, Clara, who was more beautiful? Who was the one without a love? Lines appeared where there were none before. Snowflakes shimmering down the darkened stage. Let the wrinkles on my face gather you. Get in the car. The warmth of my palm relieved the throb. Step on the gas. Let my tears melt the broken glass. The tires screech. You haphazardly glued. I'm not coming back. My breath to slow the tempest. Head south that dims your smile. Turn up the radio. When you were very young, filled the head with noise, you climbed onto my lap incessant, pathetic noise with your chubby feet that sustains the pulse. Held my downcast head to trunk. Ahead is too slow. Dotted kisses on my cheeks. Curse it. Change lane. Speed up. Your wispy hair. Trees are running backward. Brush my face. Lampos turn into silver streamers. And in that moment, 299 miles to Los Angeles, I saw crimson azaleas. Rest stop. No rest. That bloom in the window box. When you stop, you have to think. The ghost you left behind. Mother's sad eyes. Father's fury. The bitchy friends you love. It is night. The man beside you smokes a cigarette. You are his now. He is yours. Fern of the forest. An old man read a love poem in front of the Trieste in North Beach. Clara. High. Apart. Throw your wings out to the stars, to the storm, to the sea. Take what makes itself a tomorrow for your flight. You held your red kickboxing gloves high and belched like a man. Jupe. Jewel. Jews. Julia. Amity. His sipping tea on the sidewalk of Istanbul. Sharing a fish sandwich by the sea of Marmara. Sleeping in a cave, lulled by soft dust that felled on our clothes. Our bodies scrubbed clean under the ancient dome. Little face. Today I pass by the Saphir Cafe and looked in through the window. Of course, you weren't there. But for me, looking had become a habit and I saw no reason to break it. One time you waved me into the cafe when you recognized my long yellow turban. Do people you see in Portland have such signature attire? I walked down the gargantuan apartment building where you and Brent had lived and thought of the time you dropped your keys down the laundry chutes. I chuckled, imagining your shocked expression. This was another gray day in San Francisco, but the wind had died down. The walk to Safeway was quite pleasant. But you must have grumbled when you went to buy groceries in the winter, in the rain and bitter cold. What is it like for you now to be away? What kind of loneliness permeates your days and what kind of liberation do you feel in this loneliness? Earlier this evening when I was at my desk, Kiki slept on my pillow between my back and the back of the chair. I had forgotten that she was there. When I got up she went plop onto the seat. I picked her up, cookie, cookie, I stroked her. She wasn't hurt but smelled of sleep like the scent of a baby girl. Another memory surfaces as I write this of cradling you in my arms and another of holding your hand. Since you left, memories are what I hang onto. They are all beautiful even when there was sadness. She emerged from the waves of the resounding sea, restored her body on a fallen log and the sleeping Vishnu awakened. She lifted her wings, a squealed of delight, firefly rising. Thank you. So the textures are all different but the work ethic is very much similar. We got some sad news this week. Jeannie Lepton who used to organize a reading series in Alameda passed away and I was and will remain for some while. Really sad about that but I thought you remember poets by reading their work so I'm going to read a couple of her pieces and then we'll wind this up. My father told me I would live through a man. I finally found him my 84-year-old client who has dementia. How many shrimp in this shrimp fried rice? I saw one. It's probably the same one I saw. Are my sisters around? No, they passed away, Larry. Oh, hell. I'm sorry to have to tell you. Are my sisters around? Anyway, Jeannie was a ray of sunshine in human form and she will remain loved for a long time. Thank you all for being here. If we could have another round of applause for our feature. Also for the library for supporting us and our AV crew back there, Kenny and Mike and John, the host and Doug who made the buttons and I guess Michelle Jeffers who told you guys this was a good place to come. So thanks for being here and I will remain for a few minutes longer for those of you who need to ask some questions. Take care.