 I'm on YouTube and I'm going to let folks in. Have a great reading. Hello and welcome. Thank you all for coming to today's Poetry Reading with Bill Vartanot and Taurean Horn Press Poets. I'm John Smolley and I'm a librarian with the San Francisco Public Library. While we're waiting for everyone to join us, I want to take a moment to acknowledge our community and to tell you about a few of our upcoming programs. On behalf of the Public Library, we want to welcome you to the unceded land of the Ohlone Tribal people and to acknowledge the Mayromitish Ohlone Tribal groups and families as the rightful stewards of the lands on which we reside and work. Our library is committed to uplifting the names of these families and community members and we encourage you to learn more about First Person Rights. SFPL Summer Stride Literacy Program is continuing through August. Summer Stride is the library's annual Summer Learning, Reading and Exploration Program for all ages and abilities. Join us for author talks, reading lists, book giveaways, nature experiences and more. You can register today by visiting our website, sfpl.org. On Wednesday, August 18th, San Francisco Chronicle Film Critic, Mick LaSalle will discuss his new book, Dream State, California and the Movies. Referencing films such as The Wizard of Oz and La La Land, LaSalle will take us on a freewheeling humorous journey through big screen versions of the Golden State. On August 23rd, NPR editor, Malika Garib leads a workshop on the ins and outs of creating your own zine. The next day on August 24th, please come to SFPL's Total SF Book Club Program when authors Daniel Handler and Gary Camilla discuss their new anthology, The End of the Golden Gate. The next day on August 24th, Jim Ben-Buskirk and co-hosts present an illustrative talk on neon's humanist presence in cinematic representations of San Francisco. On August 30th, SFPL's On the Same Page Book Club meets to discuss award-winning author Jacqueline Woodson's new novel, Red at the Bone. Finally on August 31st, author and photographer John Lander shares his evocative images of temples from Japan's Chikoku pilgrimage trail. He'll discuss the origins of the trail and the trail's significance for its thousands of annual programs, billboards. This ends my announcements. I will now turn the microphone over to the poet, editor and tower and horn press publisher, Bill Vartanaw. Please welcome Bill Vartanaw. And you'll need to unmute yourself, Bill. This is a very big honor for me as someone who had this screen 48 years ago. In North Beach. And we're going to have a reading to celebrate that dream. And the press started as part of the Bay Area Poets Coalition had a big blowout one week long festival. And there's a, excuse me. Anyway, Carol E. Sanchez and Barbara Gravel created the Bay Area Poets Coalition. And we wanted to celebrate that. And we had about 300 poets who were signed up for that back in by June 21st, 1960. And I really enjoyed it and I wanted to commemorate it by having an anthology. And that didn't work out so well, but I did have the anthology which was called Honeydew. And there was a lot of political stuff that I being new to town didn't know about. And so we had eight poets in the anthology which was fine, I loved the anthology. So, and then I started doing single books and Paul Vane was the first of the single books and Carol E. was the second and Fran Craggett was the third. So I've been doing it off and on when I had the money. So I drove cab, I worked in a bank for a while, I worked for UC for a while, that's how I supported it. So, and I went to readings all the time and I always wanted to showcase the people that I loved at readings. And now you're about to hear some of that. So, I will start a poem by QR Han Jr. whose book I did several years ago. And I came across this and it just really seemed perfect for today. It's called, I never used to end a poem with a preposition. Sometimes I fill a room with not me, like I fill a poem with not me, filling a role prosaically with someone else's poetics, filled with nots and which nots and what nots and how not tos, not me, fill poem, I sometimes fill a room with, going to read one of mine for my grandfather called Sea Lakes. My grandfather on his knees, lost on the roof above the sauna. The sea captain doesn't see the rocks along the coast of this adventure. I don't know how my father was able to get him down. I wasn't there. My father told me my grandfather wouldn't get in the ambulance three years before when he had a stroke, holding himself up with a pitchfork. It's threat. He said, no, it's not my time. He was used to the ocean of consciousness rising and falling. He had sea legs from the ocean storms. He shifted to the pitchfork, right? To steady himself through his body storm to alone. He was alone and working. Work is the most important thing. He worked 18 hours a day in his used lumber yard, in his garden, his ranch, into his mid-90s. He had no fingerprints. He had given the earth his identity, a hollyhock in the garden next to the steps to his back door. I'm flora. He couldn't believe his ears. He didn't hear well, but it was plain. You're the kindest man in the world. I know it's hard to believe. He repeated the story for his last six or seven years, even after his stroke when he remembered it, and it never changed. Three, I don't know how I knew then when I left him after a visit. Everything seemed okay. He no longer used the pitchfork, but I knew under my breath, I said goodbye. I wished him well. I didn't know why. The next time he said, "'You look familiar, but I don't know your name. "'It's the same as yours, as if that's a help.'" My parents honored his wish to live at home next door. Once I visited, he was playing solitaire in the kitchen amid chickens and sheep, the smell. It's getting too cold to feed them. We're all warmer here. A few months later, my grandfather on his knees lost on the roof above the sauna. My father took my grandfather to the rest home that day with no resistance. The next day, it was a quiet storm. His sea legs were all he needed. He changed to crickets, crickets, crickets. I used to turn over wood in my grandfather's lumber yard. Black crickets would be there along with slugs, potato bugs. They'd be all over at dusk, filling the night outside my window. Crickets create oral constellations like sailors of old. I followed them into dream, beyond. Looking back, they were my summer home. Crickets, crickets. Drowned out by traffic and other forms of human ego, crickets are a present like a communal drum. Given enough space, we hear them rub legs together. The sound defines the field, eclipses the fading light, the passing time. Crickets, crickets. I'm going to read a poem that I dedicated to Carolee Sanchez and to Diane de Prima. It's called The Amphibians of Consciousness. Beyond the quiet dappled light, through the shadows of many child and adulthoods, beside the creek that swells in spring, the Amphibians of Consciousness gather around a rough and ancient oak throughout the incense and candle ceremonies among satyr and winged minions, the Amphibians of Consciousness dance. Underneath the oak's gnarled vertices, below the moon's near ivory horns, behind millennial masks of lifetimes, the Amphibians of Consciousness sing before an alchemical fire over the remains of 500 years of kings and queens, the Amphibians of Consciousness enter between the crackling tongues of flame for the time of the phoenix is upon us and within that soul-deep realm new journeys begin. So that's my reading for today. The next reader will be Jean Powell. And it's, can you see her above? Yes, this is Jean's book. And it just came out of beginning of June, I believe. And Jean, I met in the 90s, she was running a reading and I've watched her grow since then. It's been amazing. Jean, you wanna unmute and I will mute. Okay, I found my unmute button. Hello to everyone and thank you to Torian Horn Press and to the San Francisco Public Library for this reading. Tick-Not Hahn has said, I have lost my smile, but don't worry, the dandelion has it, which is in part responsible for my title and my cover. Writing memoir is hard. You knock on doors nobody wants to open, let the past stay past under padlock and leafy moths, blankets, you knock on those windows with tiny pains. Memory won't let you in there out of pity, too rough on your consciousness, emotions likely to rile up and stomp. Writing memoir is hard. You have to go really slow, walk along dusty pathways with a watering can, stop to take in deeply notched leaves, hear the sighing of tree branches in the wind as they recall close cousins cut down, you go home and chant as candles glow. You hold jars of beets your grandmother canned, caress earrings blue and silver, your mother left before she walked away, and that brown radio in an antique store, just like the one your dad listened to, you stand and whisper to it, close your eyes and imagine, simply imagine where he might be buried. Writing memoir is hard. A gravestone library beckons and you climb its steep and winding staircase with urgency, at least you did before the plague year. You stroll along the shelves and touch bookspines, when one touches you back, you open and read, memories slip from printed pages, rifle through your curls, nestle in your crimson scarves. Close to the bay, you walk the Embarcadero, ancestors float in waving from fishing boats a thousand miles from Great Lakes territory. You recall fish fries, lamps hung from trees, and laughter lighting up from the sea, lighting up sundown shadows. The tide goes out before weight, before they hook a place in your memory. On public transit, electric bus and metro car, people parade past and you inspect for that trace of yesterday others find in family bibles and albums bulging with photos posed and candid. A stranger smiles and greets you by your birth name, unknown out here on the west coast. What are the archangels trying to tell you? Start with the little girl first. You know, the one with long braids on the cover of February voices, find her again. Won't be easy, but gain her trust and the cadences will emerge, will outshine manufactured dreams, break through your silence. This memoir business is hard, but where else are you to go? And I did have a comment or two on gentrification. This is called the dual face of fear. In my city, walking along my streets, looking like the visitor you are, you give me that look that says you are questioning my credentials, my authenticity, my right to be here in my city. Walking in my direction, you suddenly notice my golden brown roundness and show all those attitudes, entertain all those postures, grabbing your purse and holding it close in as I walk past you. Let me tell you something. All the while you brush past me, wearing African jewelry and cornrow braids, a touch of blackness in fashion where you come from, while you clutch your designer knockoff, making me unwelcome in my own hood when I walk by on my sidewalk, let me tell you something. You clearly cannot tell the difference between what is real and what is fake. So listen up, real good winch. If I wanted to, I could remove your fake face and paste it on that designer knockoff. But since no part of you is real, why should I bother? This one is entitled about that noise. New neighbors upstairs, smiles and goodwill. Nice to have you in the building, I say almost convinced, sincerity and good cheer rule their house. You'll love it here, I say, as they move in, bustling with boxes and lamps to light their way, free of any concern about their place in the world. Moving is hard work, right? On top of whatever else is going on in their busy, well-scrubbed lives, fresh from a world of picket fences painted white. We grew up in the same country, right? Not possible, a small voice said, which I ignored until two o'clock in the morning broke with loudness. Do they know what time it is? Almost dawned eyeglasses to walk upstairs, a small voice inside whispered, no, wait. Recall one thing, you did not grow up in the same country they did. There was a wall and lots of fences, remember? And it's 2 a.m., dark outside as you are dark. What happens when they look out and see you will they remember who you are? No, better to endure their heedless noise. Recall these young Americans were trained in a country very different from yours. Endure the noise until morning, then text the resident manager who passes for white so you will be safe another day. This one is for Oscar Grant, thank you. My country, tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Did you know before today a bullet fired in disdain callous indifference into a young father's back as he lies face down on harsh cement? Will power through, race through his body prone, bounce off the pavement cold and splash back into vital organs like the heart and spirit and soul leaving no room for compromise, explanation or forgiveness and no time to say goodbye to his lovely baby daughter. But you know now, of thee I sing. This one is for my mother. When you left me to go hide in that silk lined casket I pulled fresh dandelions and hid them in my coat until the grave diggers rested their shovels. I scattered your lioness dandies on the dirt covering your new home. Near the end of my childish days you always did travel without me. This cemetery trick was no new game. To see you dance once more to that swing music you liked on the radio when you thought no one was watching. Recalling a time before husband and kids and worries when you worked swing shift with all the other rosies and danced the night away. To hear you laugh once more would have been sweet. This is called wearing a poem. She walked somewhere in her fifth decade and decided to start treating herself right. A hard struggle it was yanking permission from the many judges holding forth. Evicting them took effort but she did it heaving too with pitchfork and fire. Now she could eat chocolate as a right and buy a latte every day damn the expense. Wrap mother of pearl around her wrist and dangle seductive earrings from her lobes. Order custom arch supports and drape long silk scarves around her golden brown neck wear a lipstick carnelian in color sporting the name Toast of New York. Easy to understand this alluring defiance. She wears, she carries a poem in her eyes. I think I have time. Thank you for one more. Or I never quite figure out how to time myself. Two more. Okay, two more. I think I'm getting a smile there. Some of you remember your school days. We noticed the new girl right away. Her long braids finished with ribbons. No one wears that style anymore. And she doesn't smile. Just stares as though searching for something. We are the popular girls. Well, some might say mean girls but we never intend to be mean. Some decisions we have to make so we can remain popular. Our Penelope really is mean when you cross her but we are teaching her to mellow out and when she doesn't then we get mean until she does, you know, mellow out. Back to the new girl. Looks like she reads a lot of books. Those black rimmed glasses mean business, right? Too smart means she can't be popular, at least not with us and we are the only ones who matter. We'll find out her secrets, show a little mercy to the shy ones and they always spill their guts. And my last poem inspired by an Ikea commercial. So she heard a guy yelling half past midnight just as it started to rain. Rain wasn't much. A few drops here and there. His yelling matched the uncertain rainfall. Rush of words, little volume, silent hesitation. He wanted to share, had information we all needed to know but no one had time to listen. The effort it took to open drapes, raise windows, turned down the internal noise. It was more than anyone could manage. Next to the man in the rain was an Ikea lamp discarded by her neighbor for a newer one. The man in the rain uprighted the lamp, adjusted its shade and suddenly it gave him light, gave warmth and clarity to his voice. Do you see what I'm saying? How important it is to listen to the rain, to mother nature. How important it is to shelter each other, to not abandon hope. Rain drops intensified his speech and upward gaze. So she heard this guy yelling as she threw her husband's suits out of the window she finally opened. Thank you, he said. But she could not hear the man lit by Ikea's lamp. She was done listening to him, to anyone. Thank you. Thank you, Gene. The next poet is Tom Sharp. And he can also, he's written lots of books and they're online on sharpgiving.org, is it? Sharpgiving.com. Dot com, okay. Yeah, a little lack of foresight. We should have used dot org. It's really nonprofit. So anyway, I met Tom in 1972. So we're almost at the 50 year mark. And I was looking though, I was returning from school to go in Petaluma and there was no open readings or anything which to read at. So I went to David Bromwich's class and lo and behold, there was Tom and even Buds ever since. So, Tom, please. Thank you, Bill. Thank you. Also thank you, Public Library and everyone who's joined us. Yeah, so this book here we published in 97, Bill published. I'll read a couple of poems from it and then I'll move on to some other books. So the first one, Instamatic, photograph Tom Sharp. 25 September, 1983, 10.30 p.m. Beside a picture of Suzuki Roshi on the back cover of Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. Opened at random, page 102, quote, because each existence is in constant change, there is no abiding self. In addition to poetry, we put into this book a number of short prose pieces and this is my favorite, Hans Collected Ducks. He had a rubber duck for the tub, a Donald Duck clock, a duck calendar, two matching duck lamps, paintings of ducks in flight and on the water, a crystal duck, a porcelain duck from Italy, a plastic windup duck that walked. Hans even had decoy ducks, although he never wished to deceive a duck. The Hans, ducks were not just birds, they were sacred emissaries from a wild country, a land in which, unlike where Hans lived, instincts reigned to the good of all concerned. So that was in 97, we put that book together. This one here a little later, based on readings of the Yi Qing, the taming power of the great. And as you know, when you throw coins or straws for the Yi Qing, you get some weak coins or so an alternate reading. And so the alternate reading for this is keeping still. A hermit in his hut writes Haiku like petals, that he casts into the river that begins in the folds of the mountain above him. The petals say nothing of his sorrow and are lost in the currents, fogs, winds, dark. Time has no mercy and some things need no mercy. The sinews of the river wrestle gold from the mountain. In the water we find fear, love, patience, desperation. And from these we make adornments for our ears. Obstruction or holding together. Qin or my understanding of it is my obstruction. This difficulty by definition is impassable. Without a mirror, eyes cannot see themselves. A story cannot write its own ending. After a suicide, both the loved and the hated may continue to comment on the reasons or lack of them. The irresistible missile hits the indestructible wall again and funny thing, the missile isn't irresistible. Therefore, as though logic had any pertinence, we examine our premises, retrace our steps, pretend that a life can be recorded by force of will, cut again like a deck of cards to give us another chance. We know better, but we believe we learn from our mistakes. I bide my time, pulling myself together, letting time dissolve the blinders of experience, reconsidering, quote, it happened to me, unquote, as if I had any other choice. And I'm gonna read a few poems from things people do. And this covers basic human things like yawning and smiling and sleeping. So this is a poem about yawning. Everyone notices in an audience, in a meeting, or one-on-one when you'd rather be fishing, everyone notices when you yawn. Intentional yawning is an act, intentional yawning is a political act. It can be a social commentary, a personal plea, it can give you needed personal space. Go ahead, pendiculate dramatically. People should give you the benefit of the doubt and should not suspect that it's deliberate. But refrain from yawning before a judge or at least try to make as little noise as possible, or you may swiftly be found in contempt of court. And this is on dreaming, being awake. I dreamed I wasn't dreaming, awake as you know you are. I was driving on a freeway and thinking about things as I often do, about energy and ignorance, about wings and air resistance. I dreamed I was flying, but since flying's difficult without a lot of energy, instead, I dreamed I was running or riding a bicycle with air blowing past me and my eyes watering. And I was definitely awake. In this book, I take the voice of Native American poets or people, rather, since I am one, but of different tribes. And this poem is called Hubris. It's a Coyote story from the Winti tribe in California. Hubris, Coyote was so full of himself. He was bigger, prettier, faster, and smarter than bullfish. He taunted bullfish for being small and ugly. And he bet that bullfish couldn't even swallow his toe. Coyote was so confident that he did nothing when bullfish swallowed his toe. Only after bullfish swallowed his leg did Coyote beg for mercy. Then it was too late. And the second one on Coyote and bullfish, gaslighting. Bullfish swallowed Coyote whole, dove into the creek, and hid under a rock. When mud spear pulled him out and otter cut him open, Coyote jumped out of bullfish and said, I was only napping thievery. And this is from a story by the Miwok. People didn't used to have fire. Turtle in the east guarded it carefully. Coyote couldn't stand it. He had no personal use for it, but he didn't like that turtle was the only one with fire. So Coyote went to where turtle was, pretended to be a piece of firewood. Turtle put Coyote into the fire. And when Coyote got back, his fur was flaming red. I'll read a few poems from a little book called Images. It has this little, it was non-illustration in it. Station. At a provincial station in the fog at night, the light's halos diminish into gray. A dream of arriving or waiting to leave, as in someone else's poem, memory and uncertainty. Focus on only the nearness, as in a dream you don't think to remember or predict. Wooden gables over brick, shading tall hazy window frames, dim light bulbs showing gray rails and gray cement vanishing into fog. Kitchen. The kitchen seemed as big as the whole house or rather to the rest of the house, or rather the rest of the house to my mind had only cold, dark, small rooms, whereas the kitchen was warm, well-lit and big enough for everybody with its large wooden table, its sinks, its broad counters, the smell of smoke and garlic and the huge cast iron stove with pots and ovens that transform dust, leaves and chopped up things into nourishment, meals that filled our billies and warmed our hearts. This wasn't just a kitchen, but where everything began and where everything returns, the smells and warmth of the familiar, if only in our minds. Beach. The beach is empty after midnight, in a sense. Otherwise, the beach is never empty, not where the waves lap upon the sand, not where the lights of the city fade and shadows, not where fish and clams meet night bird coyote. The waves call out entropy, entropy, but where saltwater grinds the continent into sand, beach grass grows around a nest of plover. I didn't start my timer bill until a little into this. How much time do you think I have left here? About two poems. Okay. I'll just read two more poems and this is from a book called Alliute Artifacts. And they're about masks. Bird mask. A man's bentwood hat sports feathers because he's like a bird. He flies over waves. He lets the wind lift him over rocks. When he dances, he puts on his bird mask and shows his feathers. My mask. When I put on my mask, I become the spirit of the mask. My mask has a beard for wisdom. It has a smile for joy. It has wild hair to say, I have my own ideas. My mask puts color in my cheeks to show I'm ready for adventure. But it's a safe mask. Other people look at me in my mask and think I'm just like them. So thank you. Thank you, Tom. The next, oh, yeah, I am on. Okay. The next poet is Gail Mitchell. I met Gail at Yakityac on Sutter Street at a reading and just fell in love with her work. We did this book in 99. And a new one is coming out shortly. A new version of that is coming out shortly. Okay. Thank you, Gail, please come. Hello, everybody. Gosh, this is beautiful. Um, Gene Powell made me cry. Bill Vartnell made me cry. So Bill, you inspired this poem I wrote for my grandma that I haven't read in a long time. It had a bookmark, but it seems to have disappeared. So I guess it's called 82 into 40. I reach out across this oasis of pain we've created. Unravel losses locked in memory. I know your history. Hear your heartbeat. Trace your memories intertwined with mine. We women of Oklahoma and California know pain intimately. Trade on it. Make friends with it. Beat it into our bread, stir it into our tea until it becomes the medicine we practice and make songs about. Blue and red songs. Pain is the color of our fingers resting laced together in our laps. We women of Oklahoma and California sometimes part our hair on the side, hold our heads up high. People think it's stuck up, but we're just sniffing the sky for rain. For an end to the pain, we sit across from each other. The color of earth. The color of the horse you rode when you bled for the first time and thought the world was going to open up and swallow you. We sit together, not speaking, holding pain in our breasts, both calling out for mothers we barely knew. And our history is mixed up with fathers that ruled with an iron hand that rusted shut. It's mixed up with too much silence that leaves our voices ghostly and our feelings thick. We stand in the cemetery. We can weave arms. We can both feel. We can weave hands with cool reed fingers that we can both grasp. We can sit her between us telling her all the tales we've kept hidden. We can sing her the songs each one wanted to forget. When we have broken the silence, told her all the stories, we can unravel her one strand at a time and scatter her to the four winds so that new songs will grow and new voices will show the way home. Butterfly Song Three. It has begun to rain and I see things differently. Tears well up in her eyes. She tells me of winters back home, how everything freezes and how the water is like a clean slate. There's a story waiting. She whittles a stick with her knife, snake slithers force forth. I am not sure if I am dreaming where she is. Moving pictures to support the story. She has hair like rope, which smells of amber musk. I want to go deep within her forest. Pick the leaves, fan the flame, listen at the base of the tree. Feel the roots, know what I feel. We are new to this dance. We want the outcome to go smoothly. We want colors to merge. We do not want to tangle threads or break them. She shows me how to thread the heddles. Switch pedals to push. I want to breathe in her scent. Listen to her heartbeat. Feel her warmth. Call her by name. But we get lost in each other's memories. Listening to the rain. Watching the windows. See the dark coming. Lighting a fire in the wood stove. We get lost in the colors and scents and braid red into indigo. She sprinkles cinnamon on the hot chocolate while I tend to fire. Our silence drifts in the music of the rain. Ah, this is for my daughter. And she was heading to New York. And I can't even remember. She was going to study at Alvin Ailey. She's making bread. It's a Butterfly song for. She's making bread using a recipe from a cookbook that used to belong to her great-grandmother. Washing greens in the sink for Sunday dinner. She's building a bridge, asking her ancestors for guidance. Learning the old ways. She wears old suits from the 40s that her grandmother wore in college and shirts from the 70s. She's mixing it up. Cross pollinating. Finding her own way. Moving within herself. She's closed the door on childhood and reached for an apple on the highest branch. I watch from a distance. The beginning of a new adventure and a new dawn awaits her footsteps. She has begun to change from form gracefully rising like the bread in the bowl. Filling the room. She stands at the foot of my bed, looks at me and I at her. We are seeing each other with new eyes. She's studying my gaze. I'm moving within my skin, shifting the position of my legs, telling her what I know to be truth. She is growing beyond the frame, moving in another orbit. I am stepping back, taking in the dimensions, not telling, not asking, listening, hearing, feeling air takes shape, find a new form. She is pushing gently, trying to find the way to tell me she is moving in new ways. Feeling the smallness of her room, wanting to stretch and move beyond the limits she has lived in. She's trying to find the way to say, I don't need space. This is like a small cage. And I've grown beyond the confines of your hopes and dreams. I've moved beyond your struggles and agreements. I have imagined a different future. The bread rises in the bowl and she is ready to knead it again, ready to leave, ready to flow, ready to rise, ready to go for Nova. There was a Japanese poet that showed up in the 90s, fair Yagi, tears shine on your cheeks like silver rain. We sit in a council of souls listening, a mullet of skulls passing through the fingers, a lotus rises. You hand me a mask. It is small, but the vision is large. I see nothing, but I hear the cry of thousands of souls smashed out of their bodies. It rings in my ears, causes my heart to tremble, half-faced moons, lips stretched back, terror struck voices, and nothing. This is the feel we meet upon, the common ground of sorrow. It is the cells that know this unholy war that feels this terrible price paid for loss of humanity. There are newly terraced rows of grief rising in our throats. How will flowers grow watered with blood? How do you photograph mass insanity? Lives transformed, bodies instantly annihilated, heart sick, mind sick, no voice to echo. Terror song, you take my mask, hear the screams of my chained ancestors. See the auctioneer trading in human cargo. Feel rage, fear as dignity stripped away. Know the bite of the lash as it rips into the flesh, hot and stinging. Smell, burnt flesh, see bodies swing from trees. Hear the moans of mothers who have been robbed of their children. Understand the lie of the smiling watermelon eating Pickeninny. Explode like a cherry bomb, we speak each other's words. Stuffing sardines back into their tins, trying to unroll the lids, holding out our arms to each other, two shaded variations of understanding. In my book, I always have pictures of poets, so I just ran into, he's so Clifton. That's a photo Steve got at one of the readings at that writer's workshop, Squaw Valley. Morning glimpse, sometimes I catch a glimpse of him sitting up, lost in morning meditation, and he looks like an old Hebrew prophet. I swear it's God's fire that has grayed his beard and temples. We've done this before. Walk the holy mountains, ban at the water's edge, listen for that voice in the stillness. This man, who in my youth seems so full of innocence and isolation, has fallen under the power of the word. He has been swept up in that awesome light, almost drowned in the nectar of music, so sweet that one would proclaim it divine. I wanna kiss his eyelids, feel that devotion in a woman's way. But no, this is not my business, this is something else, and I will not tempt his senses or lull him into desire. I will not put myself before him as a Jezebel. There is honor in this, watching as he prays, watching as he sits with eyes closed, listening for that still voice in the silence. I am reminding that each morning brings with it the hope of redemption. I don't know the time, guys, so somebody's gotta help me out. I don't know either because it fell off my computer. Okay. Two more, how's that? It seems like that's the deal, two more. He said I have danced, witness, I'm sorry. He said I have danced in the shoes of my enemy. Seen the tree of death and wept, bitter tears. I have seen the rope and understood when they see you as less than human, when they call you savage, they then can do anything in the name of their God, witness. Her heart is a radio, its frequency is need. There are no radio-free Europe signs on the buses anymore, no late night commercials, no blonde teenagers with wistful faces, listening with heads inclined to hear the truth. Her body is a talk show. She's explored reason with the media, been interviewed, seen pop psychologists who taught her how to open up and release. Her eyes are antennae that cries Somalia tears. She's wrapped her long arms around herself and tried to hug away the pain. Her breath is the desert wind. Dry leaves parched by the sun, small sand lizards flicked out wish for her to continue. Her heart is a radio, its frequency is need. She's tuned herself to pain, moving past harmony, past joy, moving right on down to that last station. The one that comes in late at night, the one that caused her to explore new horizons. Her skin is newsprint, underlined sentences, highlighting her blues and the good days. Her fingertips reach for books that will trace the beginning, explain this history she's making. Her heart is a radio. She tuned herself to misery, feeding herself with slices of tragedy, spoonfuls of murder, and who died on Thursday. Her soul is a telegraph machine. She's up all night, waiting for a wire that will tell her who's making policy and how it will impact small foreign countries years from now. Her eyes are cameras and the lenses are open to light in the light. The shutter speed is on rapid fire. She's photographing the violence in South Central, the rapes in Bosnia, the sacking and looting of Arab villages by Muslim fanatics, the racism of America. Her heart is a radio. Tune to an all night talk show where acid is served up as the truth. And her fingertips, her mind feels, she's gonna blow us all away. Thank you. Thank you, Kim. Where am I? Oh, no, I can't see. Can you see? There it is. Kim, do you notice it? No, where is it? Okay, back this way. Ah. So, Kim Shuck is the next poet and I met her at 32 Cullingwood Street, which was the home at the time of Carolee Sanchez. And Kim was visiting Carolee's son, Miguel, and she was eight years old. But I knew it then. She would be the next poet, Lori. Oh, gosh, I wish I'd known it then. Thank you. That was Clouds running in that he was holding up, which has a painting on it by Marcer Campbell, who is a Scottish painter who does incredible work. Just in case anybody is wondering how I became a poet, the like of the people that Bill has been calling up all afternoon are the people I learned to write from. So this is from my latest book called Exile Heart from That Painted Horse Press. We wanted catfish and wild garlic. Together in silence, a cotton mouth ripples across the cave in Pond. Who knows what noun will hit on the bait? A modified verb grabbed clean from nearby leaf and locusts, sing our deep hopes back to us, unrecognizable. We wanted so little, so little. We wanted catfish and wild garlic, wanted to feed these mad and beating creation songs near the river's eye, a place between worlds, right down near the front of the stage. This one's called Arts of Patience. We've been collecting stairs for years, stairs and the notion of stairs, filled with them like children do, just like playing with blocks. We will paint them with hard ideas, with generational hope, and may yet reach the somewhere else we had in mind. We wanted so little in those days between bingo and collecting funerals. Houses subside and the screen door doesn't quite fit. Hedge apples grow thorn and poison in the way that they have. We collect these things, come rivers and creeks, the margins of change for things like glass bottles to exchange for bait, catch other things we want to, and all of my heroes were good at flaying fish. And there we were in the living room, gathering stairs in boxes, press flat end books, trying not to hide them, trying not to feel guilty. This book is kind of a mirror for the Dear Trails book that came out of City Lights. So these are the Oklahoma poems and that one is the San Francisco poems. Another wait. Venena, Pinta, and Santa Maria have been carried overland for far too long. Every indigenous child handed a ballast stone at birth. Five adults masked on shoulder, four young women untangling, rigging, and the elders folding sun-dried sails flaking with salt. Walking the Southern wagon trails to the Pacific like an unhealthy song, singing everyone West for all time. We have carried Chris in our pockets, our shoes are muddied with him, and word of him, our faces marked our hands, muscles sore our voices, our frog with songs of the lost. The planks have been sent out into the California surf, but they float back every October. They wash back up on shore. This is called Parent and Child Cycle, and I've said this about a number of poems, but it just remains true. When you write a particularly political poem, you get invited to read at a political reading, you go to the political reading, you read the poem, and you kind of hope it becomes obsolete, and this one hasn't yet, which is just terrible. Parent and Child Cycle, one, when the first pain hit, I went up on my toes. Birth dances you, and all of the people that will breathe at you, speaking only for myself, were of absolutely no help. My son and I did this dance together, became two people. It's another kind of storytelling. Two, we took the stereotypes in our hands and tore them up. The words we've created between us, parents and child, person and person, you curled there and whispered stories of healing into my fever dreams. We have adventure. Three, cleaning grandpa's desk, we found the Mary of Shestahova, her black skin rendered in silver metal. Isis, by any other name, still brought her lover back from the dead and claimed a son from him. Isis of sky and wisdom, wrapped in blue as I have been, just feeling the heartbeat, the damp skin, the wonder of a new person. Four, we carefully mark the places where the world changes. Pack our borders, our toothbrushes, our walking shoes, rewritten in every watershed, every story shed, children of corn walking north. The sons of corn performed the magic as they were taught and the people were fed. We are dusted with pollen, we are walking north. Five, the child shows me the mark of the scorpion on his leg and I show him the mark of a spider on mine. We've walked dangerous miles, he and I, separate parts of the same story. The gods took a handful of cornflower, some blood and we are born, danced, went up on our toes. You may have been born differently, but this is our story. Six, children in cages, disprayer and genetic memory offers a panic, stolen children, the sacred geometry shattered. We carry our borders, we who are blood and corn, we reach across the rivers we call to our cousins, we burn the cobalt. Seven, this part of the poem isn't written yet because we're gonna have to write it together. Now I'm going to tell you, I'm reading two more. This one's called healing. Goddess disassembled and reworked. The ordered angle is a scientific method that imagines control of one variable at a time and the monarch's fall, a complicated leaf cover speaking of a new kind of season, goddess endangered and the black snake scales whispering of gold, of fruits as if we were all walled gardens, as if the spirals of intention, the part and spill can tear themselves from entropy and unbreak. Unsteal, can unmix in a dance that we have passed like a secret rattle and shell and dance that we are called to again, now in trust. Come dance with me. And this is the last one. It's called bridges and crossroads. And I know you're not supposed to love your children more than any other child, but I really like this poem. I'm really grateful to have been asked to come read today, bridges and crossroads. WPA bridge over the neosho, I stood on it and full flood with my dad. The water just kissing the underside of the boards. The river moans shivering up my legs. It stood until a flood licked out the footings. They replaced it, but when I dreamed the neosho, the old bridge is there. They took zinc out until it hit the daylight of Third Street. You could see the crack in the pavement. It looked like another pothole and there was sunlight in the mine, sunlight just there. With the dull ache of lead and the grim scowl of Jack. Those cotton mouths know some songs too. They know some fish songs. And once crossing Tar Creek Bridge, a grandma snake got hit by a pickup. And in her last breaths, we drove up on her there like a burning library. Her songs falling away in curls, taken by updrafts like smoke prayers near the water. She looked me in the heart and whispered, just the one secret. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you, Kim. Avacha, you're next. This was the book we did and we're working on a new one and a reprint of this one. So I met Avacha at the coffee gallery and I don't know if she remembers that or not, but I do and I was just blown away by her reading. And then 20 years later, that was in 73, 74 somewhere around there. And then 20 years later, we got in the same circles. And I had to ask, so we did a book. So Avacha. I am so grateful because Bill was the only woman who had the guts enough to print all of me. Everybody else wanted to divide me up in pieces. So thank you. What can I say? Okay, and everybody was just wonderful. You just blew me away. Okay, I'm gonna do some stuff from the book. This is called Big Mama's Miniature Miracles. It all began with a little drop of dew as stupidity knocked down too many trees and the rain ran away when the clouds disappeared. And arrogance lost its mind. Next, some big money jerks come pay an unasked for visit covered the beauty of creation's bounty with concrete and a heartbroken earth turn in on herself. Brutally humiliated the old girl was devastated as she was forced to watch her biodiversity fade. The silent spaces where birds used to play in desperate bumblebees, crazed honeybees, armies of disoriented worker bees and homeless dethroned queen bees hooked on pollen, starving, slipped unnoticed into the safe obscurity of passing winds and quietly followed the flowers that got away. She sat, had to watch the leaves fall to the ground, feel the pain of seeing the plushes of foliage to get rotten and die. Mother nature was pissed and she cried, was furious but she just cried. She ate the hate and got sick from the steady diet of disrespect as she tried to be cool and get through this rerun cycle of strife. Still under our feet, all kinds of little creatures, little critters, I say, they witnessed strawberry creep like the Eloni's Mission Creek being driven deeper and deeper and deeper underground, looking for a safe place to hide as sniveling, greedy hypocrites worked hard to look all pitiful, boohooed and tried to look like they were pushing tears aside in denial of their own treacherous handwork. Then had the nerve to curse the desiccated blandness of the land and the floods of madness that brought about the nothingness of droughts. A soulless duplication of the dryness of arrogance's own lack of humanity and imagination. A continuous saga of bankrupt drama, the avid McDance, it comes from worshiping dollars in complete disregard of common sense, greed wrapped itself from head to foot, massed the sterile suicidal shame in their own self-pity and were so unbelievably busy feeling sorry for themselves that they completely lost sight of the fact that they were only a small part of life. They were so self-absorbed, they never even noticed the resilient reappearance of the beauty of crowds on that little ignored drop of water. You know, the one that refused to give up the ghost, mama stubbed a little dew drop, cute little thing jumped up and gave a tiny blade of thirsty grass just the right amount of courage to break through the concrete. It reminds us all this too shall pass. Mama nature has already paid the course and even though she sometimes gets confused, let's go and loses control. She knows she's mama. She knows the earth is her home. And these days she spent all her time getting ready to stay ready in anticipation of mankind's next display of foolishness. Regardless of whether we're ready to accept the ramifications of humanity's actions or inaction, mama knows. She's always known in no uncertain terms, earth is her turf. And it's nature's nature to order to claim what's hers, mess with just one of her babies and even history won't miss you. And there's nothing worse than an angry mother's fury. Nature is one of those overprotective kind of mamas that almost never plays a mama that will always let you know she would much rather hold you, but if you push her too hard, she'll fight. Think twice before you act unwisely, unless you think your conscience is strong enough to handle the loss. Cause when nature takes, she takes it all. Big mama's temper tantrums have been known to turn heaven and hell inside out before you can blink your eyes. So while there's still a chance to do more than just think, find what's left of common sense in your heart be an unwavering example of peace and harmony moving productively and gracefully through the life like a dew drop or we're going to lose big time. I say, this time we're going to lose it all in the long run. The old girl, she always wins. That's the way it's always been. That's the way the story always goes. She's mama, big mama. And mother nature is always boss. This one is not from my book. This is for Rafael Manrique Silva who died not too long on the founders of La Penia in Berkeley. It's called, como un picaflore aromático. Rafa, nuestro picaflore o o'clock has stopped but I still hear your voice. Relono, Mar que la hora. Your voice, your unmistakable voice, un encanto on vino like Chilean Pebre Spicing up an otherwise spices world. Rafa, our Chilean songbird has joined the ancestry that brand new. I miss you, and the understated, intense promise of his peace and your voice that I knew. That I knew, that I knew, too, one ocean, my head was all the candles, your world of song, your fanatical love of song, poetic songs that never seem to stop coming too. Bibliotheca eterna de la palabra poética es rafa. To us. Con un rayo de esperanza, our melodic medicine in the world go and mad, una etapa indestructible, proud and unmistakable like Chilean hot sauce, pebre vocalizado, un sabor inovidable, a one-of-a-kind kind of voice escrito en el viento, your voice. Una etapa semperterna, singing singing singing to me your mischievous voice teasing, perseguiéndolo, dancing to our dreams, picing up our lives like Chilean hot sauce and rafa. Encantador chileno, esculcho and calabresa singing to my soul, la bechesta de tu voz singing, singing to me, singing to all of us, the clock has stopped, but I still hear you. Relono marquelora, no marquelora, no marquelora, no rafa. Anyway, from the book. It's called The Rhythm In Us, drum call for the Amanacora. In the beginning, there was only the voice of rhythm, the metrical vibrations of the wind caressing a coco palma, slow, never-ending, predictable, pulsed ear candy. The reliable heartbeat of the cosmos, it was God's dance. The medicine in every mother's lullaby, the healing, the rhythm, the deliberate inexplicable beauty of nature's hand and mysterious unnameable something, the hidden but ever-present cadence of a desert storm. Whatever's singing to us, it has always been the rhythm keeping us alive. From the beat of our hearts to the cool of the drum, the jembe and junjun dictated the sway of our sister's hips and the sensual swag of our youngsters walker, children strutted their stuff like peacocks, flashing rhythmic wings of bongo queer rara-raragans. We were wealthy with the song of creativity and had no need for superficial supplements. It was all about the rhythm. Unifying power, the sound that flowed through us, our organic music had guts enough to be fun, was nutritional, therapeutic, and shamelessly proud in the beginning. I say in the beginning, before the concrete clogged our ears, before the foul scent of plastic suffocated the perfume of flowers, even the insects in the trees sang to us, and all the rhythms of the universe called us by name way back before hungry city lights gobbled up the stars. As we moved with the grace of masters on the balafone, kept time in a hundred different languages, had our egos put in check by the bed and bow, by the drummers in the Ago Go, it was the rhythm that looked after us. Even when the going got rough and they took away the drum, our fathers went into labor and gave birth to steel drummers, put us to bed fortified by the spiritual intensity of embitter, wrapped us in the storytelling prowess of the Koran and Goma, told us with the savar to dream with our eyes wide open and never forget it was the rhythm, it's always the rhythm, it's always going to be the rhythm or heartbeat, the master key, the symmetrical healing ptomic, a mystical rhythmic power that cheers and clears a healthy path to a total unity, sings nonstop to the cool of our soul, this drum called taking us home and we are reborn in dance. Yes. And this one is for the street kids who are out there when this old musician comes home at three or five, four o'clock in the morning, hungry and dangerous. And I wrote this to win them over and fortunately it won them over and I'm very grateful. So it's in Spanish. It's called Street Children of the Night Palo Chiquitito de la Noche en Cualquier Lugar. Black and brown children of the night No sabernade, jugar, mis nimitos de la caixa. Here it is, more nimitos who died. Ideas of having fun got swallowed by the darkness. If I could, I would wrap you in sunshine. I would hold you close and fold you with these arms and caresses whatever's left in the child of the child and you would low buys. I would like to cover every inch of you with home cooks of this theme and whether they say it by context I want to fill the hole with her dug. Take my hand and I feel, take my hand and I assume to finally through the fires I held for you and with you through the new day I just suspect. I'm a hard-headed kind of lady and I just can't see myself giving up on you. Somo lo que somo you and I para nosotros, somo todo lo que I would refuse together by history. Por lo bonito y los sueños robados lock spiritually in the maze of our destiny or je. Mis negritos, mis pequeños carajeros los necesito, the truth is I know I need you y yo sin ti soy nada. And if I had a chance, I'd refuse to turn you loose to you with so in love with yourself that self-destruction would disintegrate under the pressure of your presence. And he was so secure in my love for you and so sure the splendor you had become that even the sun will lay aside its arrogance just to get a chance to reflect the branch of your essence and bask in the bold truth of your integrity and tea. Even a verdad real y yo sin ti no existe ni un sendero de la esperanza o se que me see you. My beautiful wild lotus flowers if I could I'd bathe you in a sea of rose before I'd convert your ways of pain into an ocean of pride and faith y yo que pido. Dime yo chan, say please, please, please let me and I promise you the very best I can even if I have to wake the dead and conjure up our ancestors with. I'm not too proud to act a fool, get down on my knees and holler and scream and beg all the spirits of goodness to intervene to blow away the father this man was distressed by something to be caught through logginess and dissipate the rage burning behind your eyes. So together we could wash away the centuries of emasculating down and de-feminizing lies, have a little fun and learn to play a brand new game called demolishing walls of his self hate. Children of the night, missing you to the Lycage. I want the stubbornness of my love to help you turn all the lights inside your soul through we do we do through the misangre. I will not allow the streets any city to steal you, you like a lotus blossom in the night miscaritas. I'm not gonna miss this then see it. I will not let the cesspool and full linger make a fast food, happy meal of your dreams. Chiquito de la schema, you are our only wealthy the most beautiful part of me and I'm not about to let you go. I will not permit the hungry stupidity of you to feed you to the streets without putting up a fight. I'm going to sit up and little than I know chair if I could. I would pave your path with starters and massage your mind with a steady diet just how important you are. Make sure you know you're too damn important to let the world just throw you away. It's my job to remind you on a daily basis this crazy old lady is here to stay. I say I'm still here staying and praying and praying and staying and staying and praying and praying and praying and praying you let me in miss you need to make the people that I know chair I'm talking to you. Can you even hear me? It's all tomorrow's that you're throwing away. It isn't a need to the location. I'm still waiting a stubborn old lady with a heart full of love standing in the shadows and waiting on who you could be waiting for you to finally see me waiting to wrap you in a blanket of sunshine. Do I have time for another one or two what wants to. Okay, thank you. Folks, what can I say? Okay, here we go. This one in the book is it's all in Spanish and all in English as only going out and Tina unable to enable in Argentina. Argentina it's about pongo that music that you call tango and for those folks who don't know that was a part of a big major black music and dance craze in Argentina after slavery and it was against the law because of this considered perverse pornographic and now what is the national music of Argentina after they murdered most of the black people anyway. This whole not historic. I'll find another poem. So this is for them. So I'm going to do a mashup between the Spanish and the English. I remember the dance of Mexico in the music sensual and the flavor of the body of your voice or the environment of our arrogant creativity complete the second nada we must watch also by the door in a row celebrating those in temples. There's a lot. Joe. Recording. Oh yeah. Yes. I think it's by landing contigo Libre. I think it's a club. And I did it. Joe. A pareja connect. I don't know. And I don't know. Yeah. Excessive. I don't know. I think it's a lot. I think it's a lot. I think it's a lot. I think it's a lot. I think it's a lot. I think it's a lot. I think it's a lot. I think it's a lot. I think it's a lot. I think it's a lot. I think it's a lot. I think it's a lot. I think it's a lot. I think it's a lot. I think it's a lot. I think it's a lot. I think it's a lot. I think it's a lot. I think it's a lot. I think it's a lot. I think it's a lot. I think it's a lot. I think it's a lot. I think it's a lot. I think it's a lot. I think it's a lot. I think it's a lot. I think it's a lot. I think it's a lot. Navel to Navel dancing in safe havens covered with tears. I remember, I say, I remember the dusty, muddy dirt of our dance floors and the price we paid for the right to dance. I remember the magic of those nights full of stars, nights completely drunk on stars and dance in the sacred memories of an unforgettable legacy you and I, you and I too, rhythmic volcanoes, two dark rebels, two black spirits older than time dancing, Navel to Navel our holy ritual against the divine law of the lawless. And I remember, I remember you in those days, dancing like we were out of our minds in the alleys, proud disciples of the church of dancing, Navel to Navel, right in the face of the evil ghost of slavery, dancing with you and your bigger than life spirit, you and I. You and I, we were one, one body, one heart, one inseparable soul, you and I, bathing in the moonlight, one unconquered couple, forever dancing forever, forever dancing, Navel to Navel in Argentina and I remember you in those days, dancing like we were out of our minds in the alleys, proud disciples of the church of dancing, obligated to dance like we were out of our minds in the nightmare of slavery, dancing with you and your spirit, your immortal, you and I, you and I, you and I, we were one, one body, one heart, one inseparable soul, you and I, you and I, purifying us in the moonlight, one unconquered couple, you and I, you and I, purifying us in the moonlight, together we repeat, we always call it dancing, dancing, dancing, dancing, dancing, obligated to dance in Argentina. Okay, and if I can find a short one here, I guess the title too is very short and from the book. The whole, this whole little poem is a metaphor because I'm in a wheelchair. So it's called Every Step I Take, which is the name of the book. And it's gonna be reprinted, yes, with some extra goodies in there. So please get a copy and tell our folks to get a copy. My feet stand in dreams, run circles around the lakes in my mind, climb tropical hillsides inside forests hidden behind the tenement, and dance all sweaty, a passionate urban ecstasy left in Puerto Rico magic. My feet swim through concrete and drink the wind. They sing low down blues tunes and pray with dance bands. My feet are poems. Every inch on my road, a chant, a sacred inspiration, a song. And with every step I take, I create and create and create and create and create. I want to thank you all for your years. I want to thank Bill Vaughnoff for having the courage enough to print my work. And I want to thank the library who libraries always are like heaven to have saved my life since I was a little baby biblical file. And thank you everybody for listening. Thank you. Thank you, Avaaja. And yes, thank you, John Smalley and Anissa and the San Francisco Public Library. Thank you all. Thank you poets. I mean, it's, it was such joy for me to hear everyone today. Thank you everyone for coming. Thank you, Bill, Jean, Tom, Gail, Avaaja. Thank you also, Kim, of course. And thanks, Bill, for bringing the spirit of Carol Lee and QR hand to the event. And thank you to our friends in YouTube land. Thanks all to my colleague, Anissa. We hope you all come back. We have more events coming. And we wish you a pleasant weekend. Take care, everyone. Thank you.