 So first off, we thank our poets for being here, and we thank our library community for being here, and we are indeed celebrating Filipino American History Month at the library, virtual, and we have some in-person events. So please stick around. We are so honored to highlight the work of artist Lydia Ortiz, and if you don't know Lydia, follow her Instagram, we'll put that in the chat box in just a moment, and she'll be coming in on late October the 28th to talk about her work. And she's just an outstanding artist, so vibrant and so just full of color and full of life, so come check that out. The San Francisco Public Library acknowledges that we occupy the unceded ancestral homeland of the Ramya Tush Aloni peoples, who are the original inhabitants of the San Francisco Peninsula. We recognize that we benefit from living and working 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 Ramya Tush community. And I'll put in that link that I put in the chat box has a link to a great reading resource list and websites for first person, particularly in the Bay Area. Tomorrow night we have Dr. Laura E. Gomez, PhD, coming in to talk about inventing Latinos, the new story of American racism. And I just started this book, it's accessible on Hoopla, so that means you can get it anytime instantly with your library card. They have audio and ebook, or you can place it on hold if you want the regular book. It's really an amazing academic, we don't get academics in the public library too much so definitely come check it out. And then October 12, we're also celebrating Viva, Filipino and Viva. And we were thinking like we should do a combo of it. And there is, we could. Next year. Live, the lower level of the main library, October 12, 6pm, Tomas Maniz and Michelle Gonzalez in combo about the work that they've done, educating, writing, and the Bay Area history they share together. So come and check that out. On October 9, we have an author, extravaganza, hot off the press. This is part of Pawa, and nine Filipino Filipino American authors, and it's going to be an amazing read. All of these people are just, I can't wait to hear them. I can't wait to get their books. So come check that out. And then on the next Saturday we have the film screening, a loom, screening and film filmmaker discussion following, and science fiction, and I love the female protagonist swing. Another in person book event, the book launch release of Manong Joaquin collected versus Joaquin Lagoski. And that'll be in our lower level again, main library, 6pm, October 21. All right, one last push for library news. We are celebrating the undocumented Americans is are on the same page. This is where we get all of San Francisco to try to read the same book at the same time to buy monthly event. On October 26, we'll have Carla Cornet Hill will have been since you in conversation with Jonathan Blitzer. Get the book now it's available all your locations you should be able to just find it. There's extra copies for everybody. And tonight, we have Barbara Jane Reyes and friends. Thank you Barbara Jane for curating tonight. I really appreciate. Barbara Jane Reyes brings other poets it's such a great great time. And San Francisco Public Library has lots of poetry events, all the time, at least two to three a month so we, we definitely love the poets. Barbara Jane Reyes is the author of Letters to a Young Brown Girl which came out in 2020. She was born in Manila Philippines raised in San Francisco Bay Area. She's the author of five previous collections of poetry, gravities of center poeta in San Francisco, which one received the James Laughlin Award. She received the Iwata, which received the Global Philippine Literary Award for poetry to love as Oswong and invocation to daughters. Friends without further ado, I would like to turn it over to Barbara Jane Reyes. Thank you so much. And thank you all for showing up. Thank you to Anissa and Lisa for having us here today it is the beginning of Filipino American History Month so I'm glad that we are able to have spaces where we can gather virtually and celebrate poetry poetry has always been an important part of our communities cultural and political movements. It is a nice portable form you can take with you, it is memorizable and recitable performable. It is lyric, and, you know, something that you can really kind of in very very few words, here's something and have it just hit you like really deep. Right. That is why I'm a poet, and I'm happy to be sharing the space with three other Filipino American poets Jason Magabbo Perez, Pamela Que Santos and Charles Valier, and I will introduce them in a little bit, but I did want to share a couple of poems with you and then I will pass the mic over to other folks after I read you their introductions as well but as Anissa said I am the author of letters to a young brown girl so I love shouting out this beautiful cover. Right, and the name of the artist who painted this or who created this is Maria Dumlau who is a Panay artist who's based in Philadelphia and I just love, you know, seeing this picture of a young Filipina with enormous beastly wings. She can be both beauty and and beast, and I'm going to read a couple of things I'm going to start with. Brown girl glossary of terms. Make sure I have all my things here. Okay. Brown girl glossary of terms. No colonialism. In the story, children who bite their tongues eat a porridge of falsehood till they are fattened little piggies. In the story, ladies who say yes are locked in rot jeweled cages. They swayed to the tune of Taylor Swift covering earth, women fire, and they say, this is fine. Decolonization. Take this word away from you. They want you to explain why you look Asian when your name is clearly Spanish. They want to bring you Jesus, even though they see your people nailing themselves crosses on Good Friday. Moreover, they think they brought you light bulbs, feminine hygiene products and feminism. They love your fine white sand beaches. Their whole nation is military bases and air conditioned shopping malls and fine white sand beaches made for them. They need you to clean their houses and raise their babies. They don't even pay you minimum wage to change their elders adult diapers. They don't accept that you are from Oakland. They don't accept that you have a nation they did not name. They are like privilege. In the story, the hero is always light-eyed and fair haired. The distress damsel is as well. Of course he is meant to claim her. Of course they are meant to have the brightest babies. See them banish all dark from their domain. See them build their castles of light where our dark children play. Our dark bodies and tongues will be outlawed. Our dark gods as well. See the hero thrust himself upon his dark maid servants. See those dark maid servants shushed. See how wretched and ratchet all their dark bastards raucous making hoodlums and hooligans. See the hero and damsel call the cops. Hear the chorus of not all white people. Hear the chorus of all lives matter. See the waterfall of white tears. Annoying. You know what annoys me. People who won't see the through line from Joe Bataan to Bruno Mars. You ever wonder about the sound of a poet rapping with 10,000 carabaus in the dark? You ever eat fish and rice with your hands off styrofoam plates in a hole in the wall south of Market Street? You ever roll down your window while speeding down Highway 101 to smell the Pajaro River? What if that's the poem and you missed it because you were looking for something rosy at the feet? Something that smells like prestige. Can I? Do you know yourself, can I? Do you name yourself, can I? This name was made here, born here, American as you, your spam cans, your bullet buyin' boxes. American as the Jeep theme. American as your father's favorite Applebee's on Farwell in Fremont. Do you cringe when your people don't translate? Have you googled cultural cringe? I fucking hate that term. Do you know that Prego commercial daughter pleading English please for her white lover at a table for the Pitas and green suns? That fabled Filipina hospitality. So much giving unto others until you were shoeless, penniless, mute, and hollowed out. Neha, you ain't Jesus, multiplying fishes and loaves. Pa ki ki pa gap wa ta'om. Hella indigenous, which does not mean gone native. Ka kaya han bumunawa sadam damin ng iba, for real. You know, like Ruby Abara and 100 Pinais giving you resting bitch face. You know, like those syndicated full color photographs of boys and men in Lebron James and Steph Curry jerseys. Thin flip flops on their feet, one body together, shouldering a nation, one bamboo hut at a time, one set of lungs breathing, one heart, isang mahal, isang bagsak. Actually, I'm going to stop there. I'm going to stop there and I'm going to pass the mic over to our next reader. And I want you all to welcome Jason Macabre Perez. He is a writer, performer, teacher and scholar. Perez is the author of Phenomenology of Superhero from Redbird Chapbooks from 2016 and this is for the most list from Word Tech Editions in 2017. He is the recipient of the NEA Challenge America Grand and recent artists and residents at the Center for Art and Thought. He has been a featured performer at notable venues such as the National Asian American Theater Festival, International Conference of the Philippines, La Jolla Playhouse and Los Angeles contemporary exhibitions. He works as an assistant professor of ethnic studies at Cal State University San Marcos and serves as the inaugural community arts fellow at Belosan Center, an associate editor for ethnic studies review. His work is energetic. I love it. And I'm happy that he's here so welcome Jason. Thank you Barbara for inviting me and thank you for Anissa and the San Francisco Public Library for hosting us. I'm always excited to convene with folks. I miss the library. I miss falling asleep and having the security guards kick my chair to wake me up. There's a special place in my heart that especially the central branch over there. Greetings. I'm coming from San Diego, California, which is occupied unceded Kuma Island. So I want to just shout out that we are, you know, coming from these various sort of indigenous territories on the West Coast. I think it's fascinating. I'm excited to read, you know, with Barbara with Charles and with Pamela and get to know folks more. So thank you for attending and offering up your Monday evening with us and I want to share a few pieces to maybe three. I'll sort of set a timer and see where we go from there. I'm going to share a few pieces from a forthcoming book that I'm trying to understand. I think, you know, that that process of sort of going through the first draft and working through it. I think that and I'm sure my fellow poets on this in this session can agree. I think even when we hit send or when when the book gets published, there's always more to revise. And you, I would hope that multiple versions of the book just exist right and so I'm trying to understand this book it has to do with grief which I think is interesting given Charles's recent book that just came out. But it has to do with grief and sort of mourning those we've lost during this time but but also just the things that we've lost and the things that we gain during this particular moment which which is full of real uncertainty and little moments of joy right so this first piece I'll read is by it's it's a title mighty quiet. And it's in dedication to a mentor of mine in the Philippines who passed last summer. Her name is at the Susan Kimple. She wrote a family memoir about her family being involved in the anti martial law anti marcos movement and struggle for a lifetime her and her family called subversive lives. So I encourage you to check out that memoir at the Susan was a long time mentor. And what news of her passing was really hard for a lot of us, folks in the diaspora, especially those of us who encountered her through a Tagalog on site or the study of Tagalog in in in the Philippines right so. So this is for at the Susan Kimple and it's called mighty quiet. There is so much to say of this mighty quiet. Let us begin here in mark of struggle. A manuscript is but scraps of notebook paper smuggled into prison cell into forever, wherever there is deep listening wherever we are waist high in river, wherever a Marxism fumbles out of my mouth wherever the river mouths a song wherever that song is glass bottle gasoline cloth and flame exploding on government wall gutter stream is context for fish trapped in net sugar trapped in blood blood and children rushing downstream down this very street. This sacrifice body of carabao have its hooves tender on asphalt a weeping a sobbing a yearning smallest of axes hacking sky and flesh hacking flesh then sky. We wait again in another river, wherever we slip on tiny stones, wherever a small mound is too steep, wherever our syllabus wages war against erasure, wherever we crawl through windpipe of mountain hike in a cave of bats dip in dark water glorious you on a beach elsewhere sustained in him and footnote somewhere. Let's steep these sagada tea leaves longer than usual. Let's be an explicit trouble of study, a specificity of practice in monkey dance, biting black and gold tapestry, wherever ancestors smell matches here the cool of acoustic historical reckoning in expansive lung. What's lost is but a harvesting of the dream of vastness of rice terrace, perspiring shamans, their teeth dark with red beetle net dark red with beetle net humming literatures for the wild boar departing meet for the estranged. You say my life's work is to write the story of my mother, the hurt in an anthem, wherever there is so much song so much promise so much to say of this mighty quiet, this anthem, this anthem, this anthem. I sort of, for this reading I curated a few fragments from this. This, as I said this book that I'm trying to understand. Kind of tentatively titled this section. Sadness against capital. There's an epigraph that begins from Nefertiti are Professor Nefertiti ours. Her books fall away her book things fall away and the epigraph is temporality is the cleft between a time of history and times of waste. So this is sadness against capital. San Diego, California, city Heights University and 49 this alley behind 49. Call this raw material of reclamation call this principal surrender call this grammar of worry. I promise you dear Kasama. I am working through these fish hooks of hope. I have been struggling to write myself into a riot of captivating joy. I'm trying to keep these syllables from puncturing such sadness, such knowing such evidence. Sometimes you read something, and you are no longer concept. You write from a collective stillness, this sadness archived in your veins. You might consider such sadness or refusal. You might consider such refusal, the dysregulation of a promise, either way, know that I miss you. This longing beneath rebellion. These seven shots of whiskey consider emergence. My asthmatic lungs approximate candid disaster, unrelieved ruin of verb and vein. There goes our beside and postal worker with notice of death break, a commuting of temporalities. In proximal distance between throat and line break is promise of cut up song, bookish banter, memorial for those unmapped, those unmentioned. Between chest and gesture, there is fractal hum. Sleep, sleep longing, sleep cold, sleep mythos outside this takeria spilled birria on the sidewalk and this boy chasing mosquitoes with a hammer. Whose hands wash the sky? Who drains the sun against worry? Whose mighty ache makes history? I show up a praxis of sadness, this sadness that knows, this sadness that holds, this sadness that wants, that warns, that warns. Sadness against capital, sadness against white supremacy, sadness for and against your own damn good. This sadness that liquefies any damn kneecap near any damn neck. This sadness that in fact is its own God forsaken solidarity statement. This sadness marching and marching toward itself. If you want to know what in the hell we are, melodramatic bulletproof sadness, clap back confessional sadness in the back row downright abominance sadness, land back black liberation Machibaca junk anti terror law free Palestine sadness, relational anti colonial sadness and abolitionist lament this quotidian sadness, a grip of crows swoop on the carcass of an adorable dead possum and your wrists and lungs ache and your neck and back cramp at work. And yes, you're essential always always a throbbing in the hands and head in the broader context of racial capitalism. I imagine you so far along this sentence, somewhere beyond city beyond this breath of inexhaustible thoughts were grass burns, follow us Casama far under, follow us Casama communion of magic barrel of possibility, let this need less ideology, a future so radically clumsy. I think I might have time I'll try to blaze through this last sequence. This last sequence is also it's a it's a separate section but but I think it tries to hover around some of the same things. This is what it's called I sing against profit. And the epigraph here is is from no sort of from a return to my native land by I'm, I'm a Cesar. Right, you know, says there in the, it's a quick little moment that says, so that I may invent my lungs, or at least in the translation that I read right so that I may invent my lungs. I will try to blaze through this one call this radicalized grief, call this rigorous animality, call this divine sorrow. To, in which there is no innovating loss in which dead batteries flatten under the weight of a car, in which I ask for nothing, but to live in this suffering, in which skull itself throbs against baton. History is murky in which we mark history, the ways in which these deliverances happen. I have not a desire, but a need to be this nobody who knows no one or nothing on the way to nowhere. I ask of your tenderness for their collect collects or redundancy figures in search of the web figures in search of those that history violates. These figures remain non property. These figures need no permission for such savage alley speak for these bodies of want. Tell me of current pleasures. Tell me of our midnight drives from Chula Vista back to city heights. Tell me we will always pass 10 to 15 Somali men convene joyously outside the little market beside the Bonnie shop. Tell me this is outside capital. Tell me this is better than a war of maneuver. Tell me of this war for position. Tell me this block won't get hot. SWAT executes a Southeast Asian man who earlier allegedly shot and killed an elder Latino man who perhaps a month ago heard about the stab Latino man hobbling down our street. Refuse language that describes the city is killing itself. No matter how Marxist this text might bend down our street through our alley. No matter the redirection of traffic these days to make us dodge a scene. These are family histories. No matter how craft incites gentle rumination. We are fish in a flood flood of bodies flood and crosswalk ruin of state apparatus. Yes black freedom. Yes even middle class brown and white you duct tape handwritten cardboard signs to their new hundais and wrap the fuck out of fuck the police. Show me everything anti imperialism show me this historiography of feeling black and brown refugee and migrant families lying University Avenue during this caravan protest because they know so intimately the surveillance the threat they know so intensely that police terror is routine. Let us stop pretending. Let us become neighbors against an outside of state. Some poetics pretend a non rhetoric rhetoric to let language do its own work and in such pretending such poetics failed to read poetics as a work doing work in the form and content of wake of tattered trash bag capital shoot water bottle caps abolition now pins and perfectly inflated birthday balloons teach me to fight against ethnographic impulse to cancel the descriptive the snapshot the spectacle the grace of rigorous solitude. I may be super annoyed but something super is happening next door a youth gamer is screaming at the screaming at the screen fuck the police bro and yes bro show me hello Muslim cabbies double parking their Priests is all along this alley. For I give you this labored breathing. I give you wreckage from material joy. I give you miracle of collapse rapture. I think of my cousin who works as a crying lady. Each day he wakes up to perform a morning for wealthy strangers. Each day an unrelenting fetishization of sorrow. Five, what remains is a temple of internalized rupture. What remains are scraps of syntax. What remains is vulnerable to wage theft. I sing against profit. I sing lost against return. I sing estimated antagonisms. What is blessing but bluff and confusion. A weight of need versus a weight of disrepair. All that is different maddens and thrills. All that is this absolutely dead smell in a river of dank weed and the non serious kinship of isolation. It is something gentle and rethinking revolution itself shrapnel of afterlives disposibilities of heartbreak vinegar of paranoia in workshop I sing as replaced tenant against hello with cranial guitar strings strong hella hella. Thank you. Thank you so much for coming, Jason. That was fire. Oh, my God. Thank you so much, everybody. Just give him some love here. I wanted to shout out some folks on Twitter looks like Asian American literary review and Maria said some buggy does look like they are live tweeting some of our poems so thank you for that. All right, I want to call up our next poet Pamela case Santos. She is a pin my Yorker as in a pin nine Yorker I think my Yorker writer and artist creating multilingual narratives on diasporic identity and hyphenated selves. Santos co founded Portland's first winter poetry festival and currently curates the sorry, not Saudi installation series, a 2019 recipient of an Oregon literary fellowship her poetry appears in bio magazine anomaly new town literary stoke words and the unchaste anthology and I love her multilingualism and play so I'm very happy to have her here welcome Pamela. Thank you so much for all the people saying, you know, that get going. I'm currently on unseated lands of the cowlits and blackness. And just want to be good with time and ensure it to go. Lots of these are worse in progress like this, but a cluster of possibilities. My love cools me like wind chimes in summer. Every note every movement and elegant thing. When I shave ice for us. My love smiles like we have always been this age, this summer do I tell my love. Why are you so cool. And my love knows there's no question and so there is no answer. In rice found sprouting times I have grown in me parts of my love where I used to breathe flowering in me in dark places, brooded by nest list things. I for a long time was a mess list thing wriggling wrestling wingless in time I would outgrow darknesses. Eyes may air but never my heart. Three. My love sprung from a beachy nut full wind fuzzy frightened feral. My love marvels mollusced mouth, marking morsels of me mapping memory. My love presses fingerprints a fingerprint. My love in hails pheromones chromosomes. How thrilling as I open my pores slide capis covered shutters, air dormant chambers. So Leah patterns embedded into my backside, my thighs my shoulders pressed like engraved prints. Leah made solar strands of a time sun bursting all over my skin. This Devon this yes to surrender this simmering air, a body that does not crave is no longer a body. Sweetness squeeze out of liana leaves stems. My tongue making claims inside my love's mouth, lips and inside feels like peeled leeches I teeth into wet to match my wet soft to my soft. I curl into vines cooking over and under my love's body, right hand on my love's face, left hand down my love's waist. There was a time before sugar, a time before artisan confections, and so there was purpose in liana. I smile more like myself shamelessly. Five. When my love leaves a have a good night, we smell every dorsal consummate Tars into my eardrum hairs. Once, I had a mouth gone dry without milk. I held into myself, cowering call list twice I had teeth pebbling down my throat, I clutched nail list nothing but pockets of air. The rice I had fingers chrysalis, silk and bound, I burrowed born again into my love's ear canal. In fact, noobs of time, my love has made extravagance of me. Seven. And this is where our canon diverges in the realm of the things that seem unwell without order or chronology. Eight. What if my love mouths gently deliberately taking my hand. What if you could let me put you for a change. And then I watch out of my body a spectator this unexpected turn this relief this opposite of a lie. Nine. My love licks the thread before piercing the eye, needle needing no foreplay. Ten. I flick an errant ant on my love's arm hair. Oh love in your savage season savored. I blow formless words across your chest. Oh love in my maiden the merriment. I would cast our bodies and sugar drippings translucent sculptures on parchment molding and melting to our eternities. 11. Be nothing but sweetness given. And I have footnotes for the title. Two footnotes one like breeze want to like air something out while I do this. I wrote by Lily Pong's in the glanners and like Linus. Two footnote to my alternate title, things I gleaned from anime fan fiction the pillow book tumbler. Three, the head may air but never the blood. It was in the other sense of the character as she not to jima in bongo stray dogs, which came from the real as she not to jima in light wind and dreams. So that is one poem y'all one poem. This is how let's how this is my sweet sweet baby, my monster Monica. So epic story I'm telling of a badass girl and her for basketball playing siblings, all of them one squat. So these are some parts that I have to cut excerpts from a novel. Yay, novel inverse. Everybody loves monster Monica. How shall I rock the let me count the ways sweet tea on the mic and jazzy Joyce on the wheels. Everybody loves a girl named monster because she was yours, because everybody thought that she was no one's cold kick and ass blast from the past Jamaica back in the day wasn't so bad. All the houses with cement fronts, a few green grids with sparse head brushes strips of weekend maintainable outer borough brass dots of curbside trees. Don't forget the fences with gates for those with a hookup hardly enough room for driveways in between. You always smell the garlic king bonus cooking next door here the jackfruit is truly God's most perfect fruit from the aunties. Gold yelling from porches got enough for a Mariana or dinner sounds rising up to bachata sway bump bump bump left from from front right with commingled dinner smells. You don't know what a quiet house would even sound like on the 188 to 175th blocks between hillside and Jamaica. You'll even the white people have loud TVs, especially sports on Sunday weekend parties was so with hip hop soca, new jack swing reggae merengue, merengue salsa freestyle, electric slide. One of those on Panasonic speakers JVC, conica crown boom boxes record players, whatever you got it fresh was an air, a style, a sense, a step, a beat, a bump, a bounce, a bang, a gallivance, a group, a heft, a lasso, a flavor, a crew, a fam, a pride, a hoop dream, a long awaited class bracket. You can see yourself in the middle class Mecca called Jamaica Queens. And if you think we can be taken. I'm sorry you're wrong. None of the kids were ever really scared of kidnappers, no matter how many monthly guest talks from the school counselor, nobody fallen for free candy or bands or fake parents friends, all the Filipino kids you are family friends, no organized faces from church, no soft atoms and quarries from network after school movies here, no Queens kid on milk cartons ever did as if some white man was going to roll up on some kids he better stay away from the single digit age man Dioras in long basketball two balls dribbled in turns by Monica and the M&M max a million million aka mills, Mercutio, Tom, Curio, Mysterio, Cheerio, Rio, Murielo, Yellow, uh oh, and Monica, Micae, monster being the after AKA Sib Squad captain, point guard from jump, he kept her two sets of brothers in front and back of her Cheerio and oh oh being the littles always in front or paired with the Micae back when it was only the big to attend the Goya Micae and million covered each other side by side at age four tongue has started their cup of tea ritual in it the please please please the the bigs five and six with no grown-ups to the court Cheerio got the next summer, oh oh being the Bonson aka last got next please please pleaded the loudest and did the most extra tours basement ball drills on demand back scratcher would have run sooner better he was too loud calling girls ugly trashing miss shots starting something damn man why you always got to be like that lagaluma had an ally finally out there in the kuyas gave in fucking please pleaded body boy for a second smiling swear to God gonna fucking packing top shake ah take shot oh oh mouth he don't act right so a cast complete though the M&M's ages four through eight made their God next right here whoop the boo little ball or so past us brash bold right or die rough and tough magas pangwa lang galang and inga inga talaga you could hear before they even rounded the corner nudge right away white man like which is to say predators couldn't would it ever make meals of the M&M's killing outside the bodega on a hot day rip and hug and dust minis and coke bottles any grown man would piss himself if caught in their sights couldn't wouldn't ever survive little shorties counting him for his busted hair those whack ass revenge of the nerds glasses tight ass tacky shorts what's that in his pocket you know get out of here nerd ah his ass is stupid ringing in his ears as he ducks his just for men blonde hair into a sandy station wagon get the fuck out of Jamaica go back to Long Island ask around nothing bad happened to monster or her brothers and there's one little little bit more for monica spotlight my beat is rough and yet it's so tender her very existence the space she filled on playground courts sitting in classroom tagged up desks in church pews and parks with not enough trees and no bathrooms her walks to the library in the kebab shop in the roti spot her 11th year deemed the definitive age of tp2 pretty her wrestling boys before that in the only full yard at Benji's practicing her best roti piper her always knowing how everybody's lawless we're doing always making the clutch shots always on point on key on beat and like the jaw rule a shot the joint always there when you call okay didn't hurt that everybody around her including daddy boy could fight so matter if you have to get on a bike or hop in a whip or just run up don't trip she got your back if you get jumped outside the white castle her no shortage of homies that had nothing to do with her four younger brothers the M&M's and everything to do with writing for the pokey and the unpokey the busted and the beauties the got games and the never next and then even noodle named jock jock her own black version of the supladas and the manikas collected now closer to posse click squad and girl gang her white kicks for balling from Dr. J's where she blew sharpie bubble tag birthdays of all her brother brothers who got their artist love from day one her marshmallow jacketed arm hanging off the straps overhead and the letter chains and cue buses switch for spring colo zip windbreakers in primary colors and then it fall real leather short belted trenches from Coliseum don't forget the summer jerseys bootleg parody shirts from the Philippines the cat only she can make cool her glossy bowl cuts to Samantha macelli season eight bang bobs to swans crossing below shoulder hot roller curls to sun enlightened iron straight waist length curtains and short again T boss a sim cuts her brown line limb lips topped by wet and wild cleared loss her Jenna Taze and CK ones and from Pasalubon menopu agua de colonias and angels breath declared it customs her never having to call shotgun and anyone's ride her bleachers seat saved at all her brother's gains after she snuck into gyms with her always on her bouson knife butterfly and blades like scissor handles arching too far too fast her people molding their behaviors around the object from which she was not and would not be parted protection better than any circular or any lolas blessing her friends and cousins distracting guards as she slips by or opening up basement side doors to get past the metal detectors, a respect given without her even having to ask her getting everybody's rundown of what she missed in the first quarter boxy JVC and letter Sony later Sony video cameras shoulder by daddy boy or some people catching dunks and fading ways plated like bottom for later consumption her check in her Motorola beeper hanging inside of her Tommy brief waistband under baggy jinkos with pockets foil line for cop and DJ crew cassettes her tight ribbed mock neck crop tops and body suits stolen from Contempo casuals her heart bamboo door knockers Cuban link chains all custom name plated from the app her Tim's of gold later baby blue top laces undone her Wrigley she offered after smoking and before kissing her locker opening to roses and mini balloons and cars after the crew decorated late after school before her birthday so beloved that one debut wasn't enough her parents trying again at 18 after her first week 16 cut short from too much drama and rumored arson her many many many dedications and props big ups from DJ cunt candy fifth platoon anomalies sunny 3DS flip side came in all the DJ crews at all the parties in church basements and restaurant halls baptisms and barrio fiestas at St. John's and Philippine independent state parades where you can find her by the long blue white yellow red beaded flag necklaces Bob and all her Pinoy wears shabby tank Ali bought the characters of her name Moa Nica painted on bare thighs her late night pages see this prayer is because somebody somewhere always want to kick it and confess and make bullet bullet on the cordless shoot their shop even if dude had zero chance of legal for actual dating her point guard stand from across the room and her brothers when they were about to take their first steps into nookie rookie rights no longer her place to call and all out of time outs her neutral brown fish I'd facial expression at every gesture that her darlings a k a her razor by the song box cutter made on a face as young as her own who's only misfortune being uncleaned as her squad her people her ability to set the gravity the vibes before we call them vibes the energy the temperature the zones the stomp in the box out the fast grades the orbits of her brothers around her on the block her galactic position being our son our our our everybody love monster Monica nothing bad happened to monster Monica nobody would let anything happen to their own and they ask what do you call it it's my beat Salamat went a little bit oh my god Pamela that was amazing thank you so much wow okay and Jane V says somebody publish Pamela so yes yes somebody please publish Pamela alright thank you so much that was amazing alright our final reader for the evening is Charles valier who was born in Manila Philippines immigrated to California when he was seven years old he holds an as in chemistry from Salabat College a BA in English from University of California Irvine and an MFA in poetry from University of Notre Dame since 2006 he has served as one of the poetry editors at fence magazine very nice Charles currently resides in Portland Oregon where he works as a change manager for Nike as well as serves on the board of directors for the independent publishing resource center his first book proof of stake has just been released on phonograph edition so there it is beautiful beautiful work of full of elegy and it's just right here so please welcome Charles thank you all thank you Barbara thank you Jason thank you Pamela I feel very blessed to be part of this group here you guys are really amazing work thank you for having me so yeah my book came out earlier in the year it's called proof of stake and it's an elegy it's a one long poem my daughter my first daughter Vivian died 10 years ago and so this was kind of a long process and trying to figure out how to write about kind of that loss so a little bit of a shift here from Pamela but hopefully I'll insert some humor as well alright and the portability of grief is such a wondrous thing the transit so efficient every circumstance so easily succumbing to tenebristic splendor the unsettling realism of the eyes you never opened Vivian the lifeless hand that could not grip my trembling fingers follow me across continents from Europe to Asia the dark background persists with single sources of light shining on different body parts and one day it is your perfectly shaped eyebrows the next the meconium spilling out of your nose your mouth I close my eyes in Cambodia and I see your hands and I wake up in Iceland and the light focuses on your chin your lips in Singapore I burn incense and imagine your voice in the Philippines I scatter your ashes on the leeward side of hope and reflection the prismatic nature of remains ashen and oaken bits of bones so far removed from any sense of purpose or structure mourning and residue the structures of grief pressed and dried textures so indecipherable they disorient with ease emotional glyphs aspirating sullied surfaces I'm trying to make sense of it all but the meanings escape as quickly as the memories form a scent here a song there feeling you tumble and kick through your mother's worn sweater the ultrasounds like cosmic pulses codes I could never decipher in retrospect were there messages in the space noises nuances lost in stilted poetics of remembrance if only I had faith I would embrace divination or in desperation attend a seance or divine meaning in tea leaves and coffee grounds and tarot cards the stars alignments and cosmic conjunctions and retrogrades let me tell you about my poetics of grief an integral lower limit memory upper limit intertextuality some things we will never know others we recreate in inadequate prototypes failing fast a euphemism for bringing ideas to life without rigor or discipline the things in themselves such rough translations they're nearly comical and everything is an act of translation and everything slips between bounded contexts putanginako is Tagalog for I love you come a mierda y muere Spanish for I hope you feel great Malakia is Greek for lovely domain-driven design is geek for fuck all y'all stakeholder fatigue is business speak for back the fuck up defund the police is American for I want to school fuck your grandma and eat your babies blue lies matter is American for just harvesting strange fruit my popular groves how do we continue when so much depends on stable interfaces communicating if not in outrage than in poetry if not in poetry than in song how did we get this far Vivian I mean really how did we get here how did the poplar panels die and make way for canvas the mannerist again the caravagisti was it simply bolder economics regardless canvas for the stretching followed reconquista Jesus in shades of burnt umber on hemp derivatives Muhammad in erasure in absence profits and profits skein to skein Baroque is broken after history's serpentine movements like the Portuguese Armada slithering through the streets of Malacca preparing to sack the cities and palaces the sultanate the Portuguese infidels reputations proceeding them secure through their piracy and savagery sewing dogs ears and mutilated hostages perhaps a bit too much for the heathens I flipped through the pages of the boxer codex the Tagalogs the visa and the negritos the constituent carcatures all in such a vivid all in such vivid color Vivian your progenitors the pre-colonial adornments refinements the weaponry such unnatural gestures captured bound in Chinese paper timeless and reproduction mythology blurring deities demons nobles and warriors parts of me died each day with you Vivian parts of me want to cover my body in your story in Suya say in bullet on in pre-colonial script diacritics and all hashtag throwback Thursday one of five battle of Maktan 1521 silhouettes of Spanish ships anchored far from the shore the sky and sea are bathed in golden light wispy clouds a darker hue 205 Ferdinand Magellan leads 49 armored men with swords axes shields crossbows and muskets their faces strain as they wade through thigh high water details of rock and coral frame the soldiers the blue water so perfectly clear three of five hundreds of natives surround the heavily armored soldiers the natives are throwing rocks and spears the ferocity contrasting the demoralized faces of the Spanish soldiers four or five soldiers setting house on fire in foreground as dozens of houses burn in the background the smoke obscures the faces bottom right a native mouth a gap as another native lunges at the soldier anger in his eyes five of five a dozen soldiers surround Magellan in various stages of slaughter as a large crowd of natives attack with spears and compilons in the center Magellan on the ground tending to his bloody left leg natives advancing to pierce and slice hashtag parties over I think of Laplu Laplu standing in the blood of Magellan's men and it's hard not to project some trace of Hollywood and cathartic bloodshed and it's hard not to project our 21st century concepts of freedom stop there guys thank you so much wow that was amazing thank you so much thank you so much oh my god ah okay so I wanted to once again thank Jason and Pamela and Charles for your amazing work I'm just so like thrilled to have you all here um Anisa do we have much more time do we have I know we are approaching eight o'clock it is eight o'clock but if you want to read again you want to read again you know if we don't kick anybody out and my god that was amazing thank you all wow wow wow wow wow is there time to hype each other up because I want all of y'all and girl like it's amazing so I think so yeah I love all this yeah I love a good poetry love fest especially among Phil Ames I think that um you know we spend so much time kind of like you know kind of creeping around the edges of this quote unquote poetry scene and then when we find one another it's like holy shit your stuff is amazing and you know so I definitely appreciate this but I'm wondering like um did you folks have anything you wanted to say or add or ask or just look at one another in awe maybe see if somebody in among our attendees has something that they absolutely must ask yeah like appreciate y'all like that we all do something different that we all do our poetics and we're all out here yeah yeah yeah I feel like you guys are on the verge of saying something but I don't know yeah but um and I just want to say thanks again I mean I think this is a great group in terms of just again just how different to your panel or our poetics are just how our approach is fantastic is a great like mix I thought yeah I think so too and Anisa just put in the chat if anyone wants to speak we can unmute so if anybody does want to speak yeah that'd be great so let's go ahead and do that I didn't script anything because I wanted to just kind of see like what would happen um you know once again I'm very very thrilled you are all here um you know I'm always kind of I always kind of hear a couple of things from folks who you know from readers and first thing is that well I don't really get poetry and then the on the other side of that are folks who are just like you know I feel this I don't have the language to explain to me why or how but I feel this and so we kind of hover somewhere in between and maybe I could ask you folks to say a couple things about you know your poetics and just open it up or not I was going to say you know I think that some of the pieces that Jason read really resonated with me I mean well I mean both you and Pamela I mean as far as like the rhythm was just so fantastic in terms of and again I think this this goes back to your earlier point Barbara as far as you know the when we think of like poetry in terms of oral tradition and just the great you know history that we have in the Philippines I think I think you guys are really carrying that lineage to great directions in many ways right and so I think it's a fantastic way to your point Pamela needs to be published try it's called Secret Lumpia it's called Secret Lumpia that is the necklace Secret Lumpia I like that I see this along that line what drives you to words does anybody want to address that what drives you to words maybe even to language life living trying to survive and there's something that wants to out and find its shape in poetry yeah and then you know and along those lines why poetry right I can speak for myself when I say that I'm drawn to the lyric I'm drawn to what we can do and in such a small space I'm drawn to what we can do with an I or a we but that's me that's me I think for me like yeah it's I remember like moving to the US Southern California when I was seven and just having just such a difficult time with English and so for me it was like this I just remember just going through kind of the public education system in Southern California you know it was for me like moving going towards poetry and the written the written form it's an act of like reclamation in many ways right like you know I remember I think when I was I think in seventh or ninth grade you know they put me in like remedial English because I have the Spanish sounding last name and and I'm like what am I doing this class dudes and it was just like one of those things where it was just time right it's time to take it back poetry there's a very low cost of entry in many ways right other poetic other artistic media where the cost of entries significantly higher right if you think of visual arts if you think of like cinema music but with poetry the barrier is very low in many ways this is a very democratic like form as far as artistic practice this is the simplest way to really cut through and and touch somebody right and that to me is amazing yeah Jason you've been quiet over there but you're nodding fervently let's hear what you have to say yeah I think you know I've you know I've been reading with Barbara for a while in certain events you know and I think you know my my initial impulse you know a lot of my I guess my formal training I guess is in fiction writing right and so I think that there's something about the the slippage or the tension I don't know how to describe it between like the lyric and the narrative right and I think that I've been and I appreciate Charles like you're sort of recognizing like the music of language and I think that there there's some other there's some other story being told there especially about diasporic Philippinex folks who are assembling this sort of colonial tool and something new emerges right some new a sort of sort of sort of sort of the deep-seated music that I don't it sounds like it comes in many ways like it I'm I can write the rhythm when I hear Pamela reading right but but there's also some intelligibility I don't know I don't know I don't know I don't know I don't know I don't know I don't know how to describe it other than then it's it's very clear to me that each of us are whether or not we're writing in English or we throw in a word that's that's you know from from some language from the Philippines I don't know I don't know I don't know whether or not we're writing in English or we throw in a word that's that's you know from from some language from the Philippines we're working with the music of other languages within the language right within whatever we're choosing to convey and I think that I think that that's why words right I think I process media and pop culture and daily experience and and you know political you know conversations and theoretical text and history it's just that that that music of poetry really it teaches me something and this is why I'm trying to describe this book that I'm working on as something a book that I'm trying to understand it more right and I think that that's a for me that's in some ways it's a new place right because I've you know I I'm also writing in an academic context that really wants a certain clarity and intelligibility and I think that being able to refuse that within like poetics and being able to look at you know different kinds of registers and being a student of our folks our communities work right like I you know of course you know I'm excited to to to read like all the great work that he has even come out within the last two years. You know what I'm saying like it's it's within the Philippines or Filipino diaspora community so I'm excited to dive into your book Charles for sure and also Pamela I know I've been I know we see each other on Twitter and I don't secret lumpia hasn't come out yet or it didn't come out it hasn't come out yet right and I adore civil coping mechanisms and the whole collected the five accomplices collected. No I have changed it up so I'm shopping it around because it's no longer only poetry it's poetry and prose. Got it got it got it got it cool cool cool cool. If I if we can support in any kind of way you know hit us up and we can brainstorm and and try to figure that out but I'm definitely down to to to to to to think through you know this thing of publishing I think we've been having this conversation and this exchange a lot on different folks. That I keep asking about publishing I mean I think I appreciate I very much appreciate. The generosity generosity in which you say that because I sometimes feel like being a writer being a poet that they're trying to get published part that the business part of it the industry part of it is like not part of my art it's not part of my practice. It takes something for me when I'm trying to put it out you know, and I love talking and learning from other authors like Robert Jane is always dropping the gems, you know online and Charles, by the way have mutual shout out to Mary Lou Marico out there. Very good best friend very good friend who let me know about your book to so. Like, we can all have different experiences, and I have heard all the stories of people's first books I've heard all of those things, but it's really. It's really hard for people to know what is supposed to even happen when you try to publish like everything like I may have gotten originally a book contract but then I was actually working on it with an editor shout out to you on joy. And so it just became something different than what I started with. And I'm sorry, I feel like I'm I'm like betraying the poets right now I'm like novels in progress. I am sorry, I'm sorry. It hurts me. I need you all to know, like trying to make monster Monica my manila may and now apparently by and war into novels. It's so long and it's so different from poetry. So I can't even like I can't even compare it it's like. It's like, is it different pain, I don't know. But yeah it's that thing that happens where I'm probably going to be seen as a poet, I want to be seen as a port for a really long time, but then then you put out the novel, you know, and then you put out the the fiction and all of that. Where was I with this publishing yeah no Filipinas we don't have who told me what I'm supposed to be doing my family know like ready out here telling me to redo darn not now. Like, yeah for real right nobody tells you like well I mean like even just starting out as a poet, like, well, there are people who tell you what you should be doing and that is going and finding yourself a first book prize and all that kind of stuff that's like well I mean. And you pay for them for that. What and right is that what is good for your work is that what is good for community she wanted to say something on social media recently that was like, when folks say community are they really meaning the industry, right and those. I like it when it's the same thing I like it when like Jason and I can just be talking and saying publishing can be like an extension of your community work right. It can become this real kind of painful awful process where you feel like you're shoving yourself into somebody else's mold and speaking in somebody else's voice. You know, which is, I don't know I mean I'm decade decades deep into this I don't, I don't think that I want to do that anytime soon but I, I see a lot of young poets really like taking that and earn this thing I have to do it this way. Get my MFA, get a book prize, find myself a tenure track position and then publish and get tenure and I'm like, man you don't even sound like you love poetry anymore. This hurts me. But I'm going to stop there because I feel like I'm starting to do some shit talking which I shouldn't be doing but I feel like I love hearing from you folks that you're doing this work that you still are trying to understand what it is. Okay, so if we want to move into a maybe a place of care, like, I would like to, I mean I'll volunteer and also ask the question of y'all. How do you take care of yourself how do you take care of your practice. Because like I said like sometimes I like got over the hill you could say with with the book stuff, but God you couldn't talk to me about books if you couldn't ask me how's the book going. You can talk to me about that at all. Um, but when I was just like, I shout out fan fiction because this is the only way I got back into loving what I'm doing and writing. Wow, my spicy fan fiction, like, everybody write what you love and then you know then make it literary so that for me, it was basketball until my blazers were gone, and fan fiction and anime, who's taking care of my politics. What about y'all. Your blazers and my warriors are tied right now. Oh, don't even. Southern California. Oh no. We can't be talking. We can't be talking. But that's a good question. How do you take care of yourself while you're how do you take care of yourself when you're writing. It's a very difficult question. Yeah, I personally, I don't. It's a tough one. It's a really tough one. I think it's just. I'm fortunate I'm not in like the academic world so I'm out of that game which is great in many ways I feel like the folks who are kind of within academia have a much harder time and in terms of the publishing industry right I mean I think my my professional life does not isn't harmed or benefited by my writing in many ways so I've executed that so I'm I'm good in that way because I want to protect my poetry. It's my space and I don't want to have to write for the sake of, you know, tenure or write for the sake of extending a contract because that's kind of bullshit from my perspective. But other people I mean that's your choice right and there's folks who do that and I get it. But I think that kind of leads to a lot of the contentious nature that you're talking about or looting to earlier Barbara in terms of like, you know what the publishing industry is and how it functions. So, I don't know, I mean I'm in a strange privilege place in many ways because this is my, my own baby and I get to deal with it how I want to deal with it not necessarily. My, my professional life isn't going to be harmed by me not writing or me participating in the industry. I love what you're saying there Charles thank you about protecting your space and protecting your poetry. Right. Yeah, it's what you. Yes. It's crazy to think about right like, you know, like just chemically speaking in your brain how these emotions are kind of being formulated and these thoughts and, and somehow you're motivated enough to, you know, write it down on a piece of paper or type it out. Right, and then it's yours. And that's amazing. Yeah, that's it's, it's your fucking work. Yeah, yeah. You kind of have to protect that in a lot of ways. And so, again, there's I think different different perspectives on that but I think Pamela to you know I don't I don't know what you do professionally if you're an academic or not but you know, it is kind of you're taking how you want to where you want to take your work right. I was going to type it into the thing artists dash scholar. And yeah and family you said it best to write what you love, right I feel like sometimes the advice is just that simple right what you love right what is important to you. Yeah. So, there is that. Any other questions, I feel like it is 817 so I want to be mindful of that because our event was slated until eight o'clock, and it is now 817 so we are. You know, I mean like anisa. I think we're good. Yeah. I think you're great thank you for all those words and you know, the bonus and talking about publishing and all that. The library community does love hearing about that. And you know people just struggle with, you know, publishing we were talking earlier about the promoting of yourself side right like how you have to become a different person, almost then the poet right. So thank you for sharing all of those great words with us and just discussing a little more of the craft and what you do. And we appreciate you all for joining us tonight and library community. Thank you for a little bit of hospital. Thank you for joining us. Can I say one last word since I even read the publishing. I really just want everyone to feel like this is this was important to me, like this connecting with the community, and having people who really get me, and the legibility and, and the stuff that's the stuff I'm working towards and so it's not like I haven't gotten something because the book isn't out yet so I want to encourage people that are so writing, you're still doing something, even if it isn't out yet. Yes. Yes, and you definitely did something. So good, so good. All of you wonderful and great and so different. And Barbara Jane, we really appreciate you curating these amazing poets for us tonight. And please stick around and come around for all of our Filipino American instrument events, and Viva events and all of our events we love authors and we love poets, and we love you. So have a wonderful night. And we'll see you again. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks. I love seeing all of the, the thank yous coming in in this chat it's like when they're leaving class thank you thank you thank you. Yeah, thank you folks I really appreciate it was beautiful. That was beautiful that said, you know and family you're right I mean like you come to this because this is what you love and what is important to you so appreciate. Oh yeah, all of you are important. All right everybody. Thanks everyone have a good night.