 So, this actually takes me a smidge over five minutes to read the whole thing so you can bring one of those vaudeville hooks out maybe. So, this is a short essay and it's about my relationship with my husband. On our first date my husband Joseph drove me in his white 1998 Ford F-150 with duct tape covering slits in the seat and trash strewn all over the floor to a rocky deserted beach where we sat talking about bullshit while he puffed on cigarette after cigarette. I didn't want to tell him about my asthma and make him feel bad so I sat there silently holding my breath while he blew out and wondering if he was going to try to kiss me. I wasn't really sure what I was doing with him but then again I had spent the better part of a year trying to get him to notice me. Thrilled when he looked over to where I was sitting pulled back into the corner at a local dive bar where his cousin bartended and I brought a woman in a wheelchair and her brain injured husband for chicken wings every Monday night. Honestly I thought he was beneath me but even so I was stuck. He fascinated me for reasons I couldn't find or didn't care to examine. Looking back I can say he embraced the world in an open-hearted way that I in my lonely and vigilant solipsism wasn't able to emulate. In reality he was a working class trash talking dirt in his fingernails kind of man with a high school education and lots of hard knocks and some jail time behind him. I was a reclusive college graduate who had been homeschooled and raised in an evangelical Christian household with hoodspot enough when I was traveling or teaching which I did for a local university philosophy department but skittish anywhere else either too young or too old to really connect with my peers in the way I wanted to. I expected one day to marry a man like my father who was reserved and genteel, an engineering professor who had provided well for his stay-at-home wife and five children. That night Joseph drove me back to my condo and I invited him inside. We sat side by side on a vintage red love seat that I'd poised opposite a chaise lounge. I hoped he'd notice my sophistication but he didn't say anything. I showed him an article I'd written for Glamour magazine and tried to lean a little closer. In the background my lesbian roommate began to stomp through the hallway and closed doors loudly no doubt wanting to advertise her presence by way of preventing any unwanted noise. I was daunted and soon after Joseph left for the night without kissing me. I watched him jauntily walk down my front steps and wondered if the night had been a success. We went out again the next week and had sex that time. After pints of beer had set me at ease enough to chuckle with the feeling of camaraderie I relished. Our first encounter was full of pleasant good intentions and slight embarrassments on both sides but overall a satisfying experience. After about two months when someone, his brother, referred to us as dating my head snapped to attention. I looked around to see who might have overheard. I stifled a denial not wanting to offend. About a year before I met Joseph I was in a poetry workshop and my workshop leader was the only black man in the group big and dark with soft eyes that watch the world intently behind large glasses. Class is harder to address than race he'd said in response to what I can't remember. I wrote it down in my notebook but I had no idea what it meant being encased for most of my life in a world view that didn't admit privilege. I never considered myself elitist but the tricky thing about that mindset is it's usually invisible when you have it. You have to mine deep see yourself in ways you don't want to to get at it. Although I can find no sharp distinction of when it happened I did finally acquiesce to dating Joseph publicly. For about three years I wondered if he was good enough for me. All of his ex-girlfriends were unemployed or worked at places like Dunkin Donuts. I was going to graduate school and teaching at a university. Sometimes when I used a word he didn't know his eyes squinted in a sheepish but cavalier way. I instigated arguments about habits of his I thought were uncouth like pushing the carefully folded bed sheet down with his feet every night so that we would wake in a crumbled mass of sheets and blankets rather than lying still all night as I did. He left dirty socks around the house and in my famous first accusation chewed like a water buffalo. When I corrected him I expected him to realize how beastly his habits were and amend his ways grateful for the instruction and refinement. I continued to needle him for months about these things before I realized he wasn't willing to change himself for me. I wasn't ready yet to see this as a good thing. We've almost broken up two times to date both times in April both during the annual camping trip he goes on with his brother-in-law. On those weekends I was home alone stewing in the juices of being singular again not having to amend my plans or take anyone else into account. There was no water buffalo chewing refusing to see the error of his ways. My old solipsism beckoned. How easy it would be to tell him things were not working out not to have to change who I was into a new me who was more considerate more accommodating and more accepting than the old one. I could go back to being selfish and a snob. It didn't take me long to realize both times that I was better off not just with him but because of him. Today we are married with a Cadillac and a little daughter named Lulu to drive around in it. When I got pregnant Joseph short of fortitude I knew had been quietly simmering beneath all his nonchalance and quickly obtained his journeyman electrician license and will become a master electrician by this summer. Well in my younger days I would have bulked at the thought of not marrying an engineer or a banker I'm so glad I didn't get stuck on trying to marry up. Before Joseph my life was a careful orchestration of how I wanted to be seen of modulating my behavior to avoid disapproval. Joseph lives with an extravagance that in my gentility was beyond me. As I learned to drop pretenses and to widen my idea of what is acceptable it was alchemic. The real issue separating us had never been class it had been honesty. That night of our first date when we watched the seamest floating by like skeins of smoke the flick of his lighter illuminating our eyes I had spied something in him that I wanted to see in myself. Like gold vein running deep into hard rock it would take work to get at but the freedom to live openly with the world to present myself as I am and not as I would like to be seen to stop posturing and pretending to cease the upward claw was prized enough. Thank you Bethany. It's a little over five minutes for everyone that has such a good time that I'll let you go. This next presenter calls me the son she never had but always wanted. Susan. You yelled at me but I quieted your grout. All right I don't have a five I left my phone for the first time ever in my room. So could you tell me. All right this is for everyone that won't get their bestseller written within the two years of this program. So our other option is to teach right well luckily I got a paid contract years ago so this is for you. You think it's easy but it's not. You place demands on us that other professions never have. You ask me to educate a hundred and eighty eighth grade students a day. Some classes have forty students in them. You want to tie my evaluation to my students test scores but you never factor in the conditions my students live in. You made me go eight years without a raise yet my students had the highest test scores of anyone in our school. You didn't give me a raise for my hard work and the dedication to a hundred and eighty two young kids. It was a cold morning forty one degrees to be exact. I turned my heated seats on in my car California the hood in which I teach. You rarely need a jacket so I don't own one. I locked my car and walked down the long corridor at seven in the morning. I like to get to school early. I headed for room 14 where I would begin preparing my classroom to teach these 182 eighth graders. I balance a briefcase a purse and a blueberry tea latte in my left hand. Where were my classroom keys. I always have them in my hands. I put everything on the cold cement. Yes it was 41 degrees and flounder through my briefcase. I loaded everything back into my arms put the key in the door and opened it. Why didn't I just leave everything on the cement until I opened the door. It was Monday. That's why my day was about to begin. I flipped on the lights and right behind me were my little ducklings several of them. We walked into the classroom and I put everything down on my desk. I turned and wrote the agenda on the board. Yes with my purple dry erase marker. It was now 7 15 a.m. I look back at the day's agenda and it seemed wow that's a large amount of work. So I lessened the homework for the night. Too much schoolwork to suffocate a child. School begins at 7 55 but the minute my classroom lights are turned on students begin entering. They come for an array of reasons. Some want to get out of the cold temperature. Others want to use one of my computers in the class for the homework that I gave them last night. Others come to talk to friends and usually someone needs or wants to talk to me. But whatever the reason that brings them to room 14 so early in the morning they all know I'm there for them. I sprout silver hair with purple streaks and I have four tattoos well five now that decorate my arms. My tattoos reveal the love and passion I feel for my profession. The cat in the hat sits proudly on my upper right arm holding a book and is surrounded with the words teacher of the year. Perhaps it is my dare to be different attitude that draws these kids into my classroom. I'm known as the mean Miss Davis. Yes there are two miss. I'm two miss Davis is and we both have silver hair only one has purple. I'm not mean I'm strict. I demand a great deal for my students. They have to write an essay every Thursday. God forbid they have to read two books a month and take a test on each one. I'm preparing future leaders and when they leave me they will go on to high school. But by November I am their favorite teacher. It only takes a few months for my students to be eating out of my hands. Former students keep in touch with me long after middle school and high school. These kids really do want boundaries. I give them boundaries. They want to be autonomous but they aren't mature enough to handle autonomy. I'm I'm proud to be a teacher but I'm for the teacher and I'll stop there. Thank you. I think this will be the first time I hear the next reader read. I'm very interested in what he has to say. Justin I don't work well under pressure. So I'm sure Bill Patrick has heard this and he's he got a little hurt at the top title and it is title is still in work. It's the one you like the most. So I hope you guys found it really good. So here it begins. Should I say hi or hello. Hi sounds as if you and I had something. But I haven't seen you in years. So I say hello. But hearing myself saying hi. It was as if being said by somebody else. I guess I miss you that much. And no matter how many times I have played this scenario. I can't control my emotions. My face can't lie. Once again I'm the fool. It's okay that you're late and you haven't given me any heads up. It reminds me of the time when we when you attend a meeting a few years ago in Santa Monica. And I was there solely for the promise of spending time with you after the meeting. Hours passed by. No short notices. No text messages. No phone calls. No words. Anger. Anger is what I was fueled by. As lava stopped running up inside and there you appeared. I knew I was a fool. So you kindly attracted me with a car magazine. Specifically latest issue of Eva. A bribe I couldn't say no to one of my greatest weaknesses. In order to get away a dinner at a fancy restaurant Italian restaurant was your way of wrapping up the perfect crime. You never remember your promise that you had promised not to do it again. Yet you did it again. This was all that you could be and then as a father. I know to you this is something that hasn't happened. You possibly couldn't have done this. You're the perfect father. Are you not the father who often say the best father is the one that brings the big bucks to the house. And my translation of his improved little imperfection should have been forgotten and forgiven. Given his success from a four family in a small town and hers. The same town that mom said she wouldn't lie her head in the direction of that town. Best I not say the reason. And no matter how many times you ask me you wouldn't understand. I'm really afraid that Sam is going to give me the last minute. So yeah. Okay. There's no question that you worked hard all your life. You would get up you would get up at two in the morning write scripts and plays you make people cry laugh and teach them to keep going. So if you became one of the biggest you became one of the hostile names in Hollywood by giving it all love passion and dedication. As mom always says your father is married to his work and I suppose money is his job. And what about us mama and I want to package you say I don't know you as well as you know me but dad I know you better than you ever know me. I remember you in your green striped pajamas talking to yourself and you would only have time for sipping the coffee from that stainless cup. I told you endlessly not to put the cup on the bourbon tubs desk finished in cherry the same desk that mom and I went to Vermont to pick it up and the hot cup would leave the stains on the wood unless it was screen revisions new monologues the stains moved in and found a new place to live. I know that big round heavy oval face that looks exactly like mine. Those same brown eyes that desperately searches for the boy who cried on the seesaw. In fact I cried at everything that scared me. Now at 20 something years old you only recognize my feigning hairlines that one in the family and you know me for writing well but you yet but you yet failed to recognize me as a poet as you think poets use their words to seduce a woman. So in so many ways you haven't fully respected what I did like I don't fully respect what you do. You still see me as a child thanks to become uncomfortable. So you change your subject by asking me all the questions you know the answer to for months. I'm constantly reminded that I'm that I wasn't good as I thought at writing mom has forgotten everyone around her even me as she buries her head in a book live in life is moving so fast only new dates to make realize time has passed. Oh dad please don't try to sound like you were there. Thanks that's really a huge amount of pressure when the testosterone rage deeply inside I began to grow and smell like a man. I was jealous of those who would constantly brag about having a dad that was close as a friend or someone who understands their issues. I also learned about that world that you talked about so much. I learned by seeing alleyways and back streets. There are things that only those with inside knowledge would share with the ones they can trust. So I love you when you're not so crazy. Thank you. This next reader is the only other person in my cohort. So stick around to December or walk down the aisle together. I typically avoid political poems because for me at least they're heavy handed and pedantic. But I came back from London after Brexite to Chicago and in the mess that we're in and I felt compelled to write these two poems both written after Nice. I'm sorry before Nice before Turkey and before what happened today in Baton Rouge. So just keeps going and going. Pull over. As traffic and Black Lives Matter t-shirts jams the park. I hear a father tell his little daughter because in protests sometimes people make bad decisions. Prior to the Femi Kuti concert later that night a white rapper is particularly appropriating but atones by speaking of white privilege and white silence and I'm privileged and white. And earlier I decided to swerve into the March that stalls the streets and I chant along as we march but I don't put my hands up for hands up. Don't shoot because it would be an attempt to fit in and I'm a visitor able to pull over whenever I please. And let's face it. I know I don't have to put them up. I can count on one hand how many times the police have pulled me over and each time I deserved it. I only had to pay half the time. I never had to get out of my car. I never saw the hint of a drawn gun. Don't tell my mom but I speed every trip to work. I can't tell you how many times I've seen young black men handcuffed by white cops on Chicago Avenue on my drive home through Austin heading east where the neighborhoods are a strange flag of black Latino and then white. And I know this isn't my story to tell. I'm just a visitor with a passport the police see without me ever having to reach for it. This isn't my poem to write but Malika in England writes me this morning to say that writing is all she can do because she's a poet in these times need poets and the white rapper called me out for my silence. So I put my hand down to write and hope it's some sort of small megaphone. It's called Game of Chicken kill whitey kill whitey. It's 1992 and Russell White himself runs up and down the hallway at Neon Street Center for Youth where he is a homeless teen with nothing but black friends and the Rodney King verdict spills from the TV in the lounge and it's 1992 with 920 murders in Chicago and Russell 16 year old friend behind one of them and I visit him in prison and I'm sweat shaking even on the right side of the bars and it's September 12 2001 and I'm at the bug bar in Brixton ordering a drink before my first poetry performance and a Brit sidles next to me. Here's my accident and says you know what Malcolm X said and maybe this week in Dallas chickens did come home and chickens do roost and chickens do shoot because isn't it fear that begets hatred that begets violence that begets Paris and Brussels and Orlando and Laquan and Mr. Phil and Raymond who was detained at Heathrow upon returning from Jamaica his father's homeland who was told he didn't look British it was Raymond who just emailed me a poem made up of the questions the agents spat at him like the go back to Africa to Poland to Pakistan pissing from the mouths of Brexit lovers in England it was Raymond who just wrote America's looking apocalyptic from the UK and I try to remember November 2008 when Nick Ugandan British skyped his four-year-old daughter from Chicago the morning after he went to Grant Park for Obama and Olivia says daddy there's a black president does that mean I can become prime minister someday and I try to focus on that someday that seems too far into the future to imagine when the future looks like a headless chicken sputtering to a bloody end thank you it's me I'm the next reader you started Marie was smiling in the time-stained photograph by the bathroom door she stood with her legs pressed together feet fanning out of fish hanging from a line in her outstretched fist her rolled up khaki pants black shoes and grainy smile reminded Vargas of his grandmother or his great grandmother or whoever was on the cover of his family's photo album the smell cigarette butts rat feces and neglect was a constant as if the trailer had been dropped on top of it Vargas had a mask on it was paper thin but it let him breathe if you took it off for a few seconds while he was in the trailer his throat would start to get hot Vara get in here Brian was in the bedroom wrestling with a wood chest that took up half the far wall what are you doing out there a stack of CDs Brian had left on the chest top it over and spread out across the floor it sounded like an exhale the fuck are you doing in there stop sending a thumbs get over here together Brian and Vargas forced the chest to the narrow hallway ripping the thin wood wooden molding in the doorways as they went all right all right set her down Brian wasn't wearing a mask you didn't think to empty the thing before he picked it up Vargas was breathing hard you could taste the place now nothing relatable just sour neither did you wise guy Brian stepped over a pile of clothes set for donation to open a window in the front door besides the smell is better out here I don't know what she kept in the bedroom but goddamn it's most like she ate the cigarettes instead of smelting on it you should wear a mask or something Vargas stepped outside the trailer pluck was small and close to the sea the lawns were well manicured a soft breeze carried the fresh smell of salt and cut grass don't need one I'm gonna run over to Mike's in the pickup to see if I can get a dumpster for this place what do you want me to do load the van bring it down to the shop rinse and repeat Vargas uses masks to swipe the sweat from a shaved head Brian took out a pack of cool was he just pocketed from Marie's bathroom cabinet careful judge Vargas that might be haunted Brian smiled the small motor of a lawnmower hummed somewhere between the rows of sheet metal walls a woman is coming by later to collect the food Brian took a cigarette out and wound it between his fingers she's with the church or something he put the cigarette behind his ear and started for his pickup there are two shelving units in the second bedroom see if you can get them outside and clean Brian struck sputter to life oh I almost forgot said Brian sticking his great head out the window take the books back to the shop to there might be money in them Vargas stayed on the front steps for a while catching his breath the heat of the trailer was crawling and was clawing at his back and soaked in his skin he fitted his mask over his face and got back to work the chest was full of felt blankets ugly things that attracted like a magnet a few layers down he found some books they were sealed in plastic some of them were sealed together like links in a chain they were almost exclusively about birds and cooking and we're not old Vargas pulled out his phone and searched for a few of them on eBay the most valuable small illustrated paperback on New England birds spare on a cover so for $25 in March he stacked them in a cardboard box taped it shut and through and through the box into the van there are other things in the chest mostly towers and linens but there was something hard at the bottom a large patch of black and green mold covered the bottom blanket the outlines of several bags bulged with the bulged in the mess Vargas shut the chest and considered staying the whole place on fire the linoleum floor ground as Vargas paced around the living room they went back to the wall blind told him by the time he found in Mo Diggliani or at least an accredited one hanging on the wall of a trailer in Virginia there were a few paintings in the wall mostly icons with fat gold halos around their heads and necks but nothing by Mo Diggliani it was a catfish in the picture by the bathroom door the catfish was bent trying to escape with its whole body one big muscle behind young Marie Rose bushes balloon Vargas touched the glass and then grabbed the frame with a screw to the wall hello a woman in large sunglasses and dark clothing was already in the trailer Vargas could see the structure of her bones under her black leggings she wiped her feet on the welcome back I'm Ellie she hesitated as it just noted in the mess as if just noticing the mess around her oh poor Marie she sounded like she had worked the late shift somewhere the night before she doubted her nose and eyes of the tissue from the pocket you're here to grab the food for the church yeah that's right Ellie ran a hand along the rows to see these Brian had set to pitch and work in there for a few years this place used to be on my delivery route that's some re and I bet she stepped over a pile okay all right I took the paper we have problems that's okay because that's the only reason we're allowed to do that so we'll try to get here with some of that and we're okay with the microphone anyone else alright so for this next few readers I was gonna ask everyone to read louder just because now it's me but Laura is that I can't read this but Laura have a few poems one is about a dog and one is about a cat one is about some fish so I love Peter do the heavy stuff the first one came out of the generative writing workshop this week dog dog backdoor guardian eager to sound her beagle howl at squirrels deer and unfamiliar gates gliding down Cripple Creek Drive enthusiasm collared to the end of my leash concentrated into old factory impulses diligently inventory and sit inventorying sense of previous passerbys if her power of reason matched her sense of smell she agrees of the universe white spotted fat beagle butt plopped on my bed her velvet face between my two palm spirit dressed in floppy ears love unleashed from brown eyes to penetrate my own vaporizing anxiety so that peace finds a place and I remember how to breathe so the next one might not be a poem it's more like a bucket list and I call it bucket list bucket list move candle from top shelf to the middle of the living room floor where while the humans are away check thereby freaking out the humans almost quite on they ever dust the furniture chase dog check chase dog away from her own food dish check have sex with the dog check on the man's pillow check train the man to feed me every morning train the man to feed me every morning check perpetual meowing payoff break the chew out my belly hair habit check catch a lizard check catch a bird in the planning stage catch a chipmunk chased one catch any damn thing bigger than a lizard put a foot long scratch on the boy's chest without punishment check nice move kid trying to vacuum me prohibit dogs access to upstairs TV room intermittent success forget that I had sex with a dog working on it humans need to shut up get so high on catnip I don't care check no problem okay regrow my belly hair check the ultimate hiding place check anticipate trips of the vet and hide check having a shot in two years no really this is the fish picking the lock a school of bright bright yellow fish striped ease the size of my hand swim around my face I reached the touch and they all dart away I swim through thousands of inch long silver purple streaks in another school they move around me like water I am an alien in an underwater paradise sucking air through a tube until I give up on that contraption and holler at the boat lady to trade me for the goggles in my bag they fog I lift my head repeatedly to breathe better I cannot speak not because of the astounding beauty I physically cannot speak these creatures move through liquid glasses though they were made for because they were I want to be part of this or to at least touch one of these damn magnificent fish but I can't and I'm having another problem the waves are relentless I look down at the ocean floor and concentrate on two nurse sharks winding in and out and around the coral but I cannot ignore the waves another wave is rising inside of me and suddenly I am desecrating paradise with half digested Belgian waffles stomach acid waves of it again and weirdly I swim back to the happy cat snorkel boat a sinner who picked the lock on heaven's gate all right I really want to follow that Stephen okay here it goes about 45 minutes southeast of Los Asterios Ecuador 1968 I took a canoe to remote finca to visit my close friend Jacqueline who still lives with her parents the overcast evening sun seemed to walk along beside me a pile of seaweed gather in my right hand as I dare to penetrate that dark green water surface I listened carefully in peace to tropical music that nature put on screams of wild secret birds from high above the bussings of thousands of flying insects the rattling and cranking of an old motor pushing us along our very own paths or destinies the magic of it all they all worked their splendors on me I recall in India an Indian couple with ponchos of vibrant colors that bore and chaotic patterns the symbols of llamas and mountains and that brought about in me a feeling of nostalgia I remember in an income myth once told to me in my childhood by one of my mates about the great flood two brothers who were shepherds of llamas some one day that two of their llamas were sad these llamas communicated to their to their masters that a great flood was approaching and that they should take shelter high in the and the end mountains without hesitation they gathered their belongings and fled to the mountaintops it did not take long for the endless flooding to arrive after an extended period of time the great flood had claimed its many victims and subsided allowing the chosen ones to repopulate the lands at times I wonder if those llamas represent our inner instincts our intuition to sense danger by the time I reached the chores darkness I consume and awaken everything there's a blockage I cannot take you any farther said the canoe conductor one of the grand trees had tumbled over frustrated but not surprised I told the man to let me off halfway before the next stop about an hour's walk in Jacqueline's cottage and about 30 meters of dangerous swamp before reaching the shores that night searching through through trails very the unknown insects now at my flesh cursing in silence at the as though to summon an evil entity two things happen one trivial the other incredible I managed to find the path there directly to the cabin and I stumbled across a man with indigenous features this man had a cranial deformation like a cone head or rather something straight out of a sci-fi flake in fact I had never seen such an indigenous man there was nothing Western about him my mom of Indian descent was born the capital city Keith O for Westernization did away with tribalism years ago and my dad was banished to send and the coastal city by a keel where I eventually grew up and where Westernization was still working its magic but what primitive madness did before me a frightened with its decor decorativeness sodic feathers necklace and chains made of human teeth and skulls colors of blood and darkness much across a face with a angular with angular features save the nose it knows as round as a falling drop I was then struck by the thought that members of the Irish bureaucratic class will cinch tight their craniums since birth to distinguish themselves from their inferior counterparts among many horrendous self-interlations good he extended me a book clothes and leather that bore some hieroglyphic characters from what seemed catch what I give to you the book of memories he said in my language this book contains the memories of my ancestors and has chosen you to bear its secrets shocked yet curious I set aside questions about his presence and managed to pronounce if I could read the memories of a loss of elation the intimate secrets of a fallen empire what great imaginings would that bring me however I can't speak catch what so what good would it do and soundly as though it was already anticipated he said languages parted process of idealization and ability that this book quite possesses as do I this book will present its content in a way familiar only to you now take it unless you will never again encounter such an opportunity of divine proportions while I held the impossible book in my hands and then was straight on the back cover drove my vision to a state of vertigo restarting the image of what seemed to be the skull of a lizard or some reptile of a dialectical kind it off thank you Stephen this next presenters are faithful timekeeper Kevin to sacrifice so much battery life I have two poems on the first one is how I brought a baseball bat to my first department I moved in over April and I'm sure many of you have fond memories of your first department and exactly and yeah and if those of you I played baseball a lot when I was younger and those of you that played a lot on I played it with like two or three people most of the time so there be what we call a ghost man to fill the bases if we had to go up and hit so I thought about incorporating like the ghost man into this poem is kind of like still with me so yeah here the title is I brought a bat to my first department at first I thought it was for protection the neighborhood like to stay up late but my second thought was stress relief tossing up a ball and hitting it to the backstop in the park across the street the third thought hit nostalgia the grain spelled out totem in the grip of my hands it's now my turn to tell the stories and the fourth thought was that of keeping a loose grip the backyard games with my best friend with every where every leaf on the trees were cheering us on the ghost man on third my adolescence on those summer days is still hanging around taking a lead in the in the corner of my bedroom this next poem is part of my workshop for the second half so those you probably have read it and it's it's about I guess remembering how I lost my first tooth and I gave it a really good twist at the end it's called my very and why VOR VORY at third grade lunch I was eating nachos and my loose tooth came undone for my mouth I pushed out a cheesy meatball and probe my fingers through the twice chewed me for my rogue tooth in front of in front of everyone and some frenzy like I lost a wedding ring or a glass eye in front of everyone at the foldout table I lost my tooth their faces chewed on with blank curiosity it was as white as the greasy styrofoam tray so I asked to go to the nurse's office I received a little plastic chest to keep my tooth in I can still hear it rattling like a seed in an empty skull I didn't believe in the tooth fairy but I knew that I would receive money and that was the first time I sold my body okay well I had a prostitution joke too but that's not the joke just low this poem I'm not home sorry no but the short story is it called look see wonder and this is something I worked with during with Hollis during my semester and I also workshop this piece today so the main character she sees her sister having or he she hears her sister having sex which is very awkward thing when you have an older sister and the scene starts right after she they just got out of the car and they're going to choir practice but they had this uncomfortable conversation about boys so this is right after that back at school they went their separate ways again even though they would end up in the same practice room Nina ducked into the bathroom it was empty faucet waters faucet water drips echoing against the tiled walls the stench of urine and Lysol clinging the air and the ventilator trying to wake itself up once in third grade Nina thought she was alone in the bathroom until some bullies turned off the lights and started banging their fists against her stall taunting her she hid there couch knees to chest next to the toilet until a teacher saved her her classmates being young hadn't known how to hide their disdain for kids like her who didn't say much but high school students were a bit more polished they practiced wearing their mask in the hallway spectators lined up against the lockers waiting for a fight to start at one end and about a breakup to happen at the other and those stuck in the middle had to travel from one hill to another this was what Nina had sense in transferring here she flushed her toilet it was about to unlatch your door when she heard girls laughing the hallways melange of gossip floating in for just a second she waited for the sound of someone else someone it all seemed still she left the stall but she was not alone just yet L stood up the sinks L is another girl in her class silence pressured need are making her feel as if she needed to do something to break it but but what she washed her hands stridently under a rivulet of luke luke warm water the only temperature that could be reached she's about to stop but L stopped then and you didn't want to think she was copying her she counted down from 10 as L dried her hands on a paper towel the other girls didn't leave as expected she rummaged through her bag sticking her thin arm deep inside to pull out a small Louis Vuitton makeup pouch and she started applying mascara with a skillful hand now Nina dried her own hands and she gave her own reflection and thought of the lipstick in her purse one that she barely used because the red shade made her look like she was trying to hard done with her eyelashes L looked suddenly at Nina in the mirror causing her to jump hey you're new right yeah Nina not from the other girl her lips forming a start of a smile L she uncapped her lip gloss and brush the bottom of her lip so how do you like Cheshire boring right well it's okay California must have been crazy fun Nina tried hiding her surprise that the girl even remembered she nodded eagerly L said Cheshire sucks everything closes at 10 restaurants aren't even good she scoffed and the boys here are so immature it's not even funny it took Nina a few beats to find her reply well I haven't really noticed anyone really no one I guess Eduardo isn't that bad looking you know the one in chorus L laughed shortly a lot of the girls thought the same thing when I was dating him and he was more than aware of that believe me reason why I dumped him in the first place Nina's sister's face popped up in her head the sight of her wide eyes when Nina asked her about boys for a moment she felt something she really did for a sister because she never needed it pity Nina made the effort to flip her hair behind her shoulders yeah well I have a boyfriend so it doesn't really matter oh yeah L's pitch went up like she really wanted to know she faced Nina instead of speaking to the mirror hip jutting out Nina said yeah he's older it's it's like a secret because my mom would kill me Nina's voice sounded as flip and as the other girls in Spanish class so similar that she felt proud of herself she passed as one of them like how old just older it's pretty new but things are pretty good the color of jaunty red on her image in her image contrasted with her muted gray pleated skirt and black top Nina's lips look bruised her mirror self was entwining her hand gripping the light at the life out of each other she pulled them apart L's lips slightly slightly pink now gleamed as they curved just so good for you she said her back suddenly all Nina could see go easy on the red hallway noise crept in and retreated like it entered the wrong room left alone again Nina ripped off a paper towel and rubbed off her lipstick as best as she could thank you this is the various first semester so she has more courage to sorry I don't I can't read it Ivario practice it together I still must I'm sorry it's her first semester so please give her warm welcome so I have this light up session with grandparents in love and so it's gonna be both but not together I do love my grandparents though that's a disclaimer so the first one is called it's a poem it's called memories of Mary one when it rains I think about my great grandmother she died when I was in the third grade I learned about nicotine in that grade they told me to stay away from it that it was addicting like my great grandmother was addicted to dipping in and out of cans spitting in Coca Cola bottles she left around the house two sweet potato pie reminds me of my mother she was raised by my great grandmother when my mother's mother was not ready to be a mother my mother makes sweet potato pie without a recipe says you should taste the change but every time I taste I picture my great grandmother vomiting at Thanksgiving dinner tables three I remember having frequent falling dreams that caused my body to bounce when I hit the ground over the years I've learned that falling on your ass hurts worse than falling on your face and fainting is different from falling I say fainting feels weightless like watching clouds on summer farms my great grandmother said fainting felt like dying drowning compared it to jumping into waterfalls but never hitting the bottom four my favorite color is green because it reminds me of leaves of grass in autumn my great grandmother was happy in autumn said that my name should have been autumn or winter because our eyes are brown with gray circles dancing around them I reminded her of September she thought her birthday was in September five I do not like soup because the liquid reminds me of drinking and choking and drowning in fear that I will one day dive into a soup of sorrows like my great grandmother did the day her husband's mistress sat shade across her living room on the day she buried him six feet under pressure imagine the pressure she applied to her palms when she squeezed her fist forcing her nails into her skin puncturing the epidermis wanting to reach the dermis but 70 pounds per square inch of pressure is not enough to leave scars in the dead skin that decorates her wrinkled hands okay that was great I'll take a break from grandmother's and this is titled conversations with an old lover he asked do you know how it feels to lose your thumbs to have them removed with a rusted cigar cutter do you remember the pain rated on a scale from one to 10 was it the frowning face or was your face a tearyed eye did the saliva from your mouth rush to age your eyes did you remember the pitch of the screen every good boy does fine or face sharp or flat I say yes I remember the cutter was black the pain a teary eyed 10 no my mouth did not go dry but for a moment I went deaf from high pitch a sharps ringing in my ears he asked how did you survive I say I didn't one more grandmother I obsessed with them whipping and screaming my mother told me I used to scream for hours kicking and spitting on cream colored carpet stained red and black with crayons I kept eating and sharpening and eating and peeling away flesh from callus fingers until I could feel the wrinkles of my great grandmother's hands she used to tear twigs for our bottoms whipping until flesh tore her speeches like times they tore her back apart they said she used to scream for hours stay tied to splintered wooden poles like cattle made to graze and cotton fields with callus hands grabbing and going sewing and singing hymns of a god that made her walk barefoot on sand at night she hated the stars said they mocked her watched her squirm when she screamed for help with her closed mouth they stared harder than any whips she gave me whips that travel from my shoulders to my waist like princess seams on ball gowns I have one minute so I'll do one more this is like, this is my baby okay it feels like tearing uncooked muscle from bone it is what happens when someone signs their name on a wall with permanent marker it is the person scrubbing off but still sponges each letter of the name compare it to screaming voiceless in a meadow compare it to carving worth into skin compare it to dying every day until life decides you are worth keeping thank you sorry carry so bear with me okay so I'm going to read two poems poems is that how you say it? the speck of time I knew you for because I cannot take you as my lover and you cannot love me back I live for days when rules are obliterated by gusts of gale force winds blowing over trees knocking down power lines making ocean waves crash over coastlines smoothing out shorelines leveling homes till we are like those miniature plastic people in a winter scene around whom snow falls every time a hand gives it a shake come with me or we could wait for a fire a flood a famine that I didn't once kiss you seems absurd this is I don't actually know I'm not sure what this is but it's called drive from our cars we see stories form Monday at noon a lady stood on the shoulder of a country road watching the cars pass waiting why was she dressed in jeans with a sweat and a sweatshirt with antlers on a work day Tuesday the lady darted across the road right over the double yellow lines toward the reservoir gripping something in her two hands Wednesday I slowed down she was in that same damn sweatshirt holding a turtle like she was carrying a tray of drinks how long does it take a turtle to cross a road anyway and how does she know the turtle won't turn around and head back into traffic Thursday she's on the side of the road waving her hand up and down at the traffic mouthing the words slow down she doesn't trust the rest of us to swerve and miss a passing turtle so self-righteous will she remember to wash her hands turtles can carry salinilla Friday I leave work a little early and speed to get to her spot where the curving road separates the hemlock grove from the gentle incline of grass along the reservoir she's not there I drive a little farther slowing down enough that two cars pass me one honks the passenger flips me the bird I U-turn and go back to the turtle lady's spot pulling off the road turn off my car get out where is this lady who has so much free time that she can stop at noon on a weekday to run across a country road carrying a turtle are her children in school does she have children? why is it so hard for me to find time to help the turtles? I don't even call my mother weekly can saving one turtle if this act even saves it make a difference or does it just make her feel good and why do I have a problem with that? would a lady who stops to help turtles sign a bill to go to war see no reason for gun control? from our cars we see stories form but how do they end? finishing us off is summer this first poem is called Brown Paper Bag for Phyllis Wheatley she was locked behind promises of salvation and devotions to a god and a master her own intellect trapped her in the world of understanding of knowing the words that bound her brown paper bag no darker no lighter no closer or further from being rescued from the fate that lies in lives she went from being a kidnapped child to a privileged slave always remaining a black woman she wrote to cure she wrote to blur lines that divide and send healers and preachers to the same pulpit reaching only to touch never to hold true salvation brown paper bag carrying the future of generations in the writing of a child grieving her own existence and for that child i write uh... this is a very old piece and i don't know how far you know i'm just far away from here is what i'm saying but it's still i'm still it's still me uh... this is called nappy if i kill him will that stop the pain and feeling if i love him will i have to start dealing the drug of lust concealed in my bust away from the deranged as i picked through the curls in my afro i let you know about nappy love triangles and detangling juices that seep into the brain and create this vain love that has overcome doesn't that consume you bring your mind to poverty as blank as it came into this world confused around basics and morals that are served what must i do to put it on to you show you the grasses greener grows much better and smokes much sweeter you need to meet a never knew how good the blues could be till he hum that little tune for me setting rhythm pushing harmony between your kingdom in mind shit it could be divine i think loves on my mind but don't get it twisted i don't really miss him and i won't i hope cuz he's not the man i wanted nowadays women ain't got time for that talk and smack i'm not a pocket digger would you figure charge and accuse another nigga hell yeah i'm bitter where the hell was my father and why my mother have to work so god damn hard let me tell you about her nappy love triangles and detangling juices that seep into the main frame changing faces into the name game what you got and what you want is how you claim life is not sweet must i repeat bitter wounded words repeat in twirls worlds complete in cycle circles beginning where it's begun and only spirits can overcome the silent wisdom of the dying tree speaking to me of its nappy love triangles and detangling juices that seep into the root killing all of its fruit and changing me into you