 So, I'm John Smalley, librarian with the General Collections in Humanities Department of the Public Library. Thanks everyone for coming. I'm going to share a few announcements about upcoming events and then share some information about COVID tests in San Francisco. Then I'll turn the microphone over to Kim Schuck who runs the poem jams. These are curated and moderated by Kim on the second Thursday of each month. So, I'm going to share my screen with you briefly in one moment. So, San Francisco's public library is on the same page, book selection for November and December. Is Elaine Castillo's America is Not the Heart? Elaine is a Bay Area author and this book follows three generations of the Filipino diaspora. I'm sure you'll all enjoy this book. Coming up on November 17th, we'll have an author's talk by Paul Madonna and Gary Camilla, their latest collaboration spirits of San Francisco. November, San Francisco Public Library continues its celebration of indigenous peoples and their cultures. We have author's readings on November 20th, also on the 21st and of course this evening. You may have heard that the library now offers a kind of curbside pickup and returns service. The main library is open seven days a week and nine of the branch libraries are open. So, you can place holds online or you can call the library and we'll place the holds for you. Of course, in the height of pandemic season, please wear your mask. And anyone who lives or works in San Francisco, you can get free COVID tests. You can go to the website that you see on the screen, sf.gov slash citytestsf. I've also pasted that address in the chat for this meeting. That's all I have to say about our events. So now, Kim Shock, please take over. Yeah. Hey, John, I miss coffee and cookies with you every month. We have a really great lineup for tonight. Quite often, at least three times this week, I've been asked to put people in touch with more Native American poets. Native American poets are not hard to find. There are four current and former laureates. We are not difficult. I'm going to start off by introducing Georgina Marie, who is the laureate, the current laureate of Lake County. Oh, and it would be great if you guys wanted to do this too. But I'm going to do a, even though we're virtual, I'm going to do a land acknowledgement for where I am, which is in unceded Ramatouche territory, Yolamo. Georgina Marie is the current poet laureate of Lake County. We have read together a few times, not half enough. And I can't wait until we could do it in person. Her work is really goes right down deep. So please welcome Georgina Marie. Thank you, Kim. I'm honored to be here with all of you. Thanks so much for inviting me. So I am Georgina Marie. I'm coming to you from the land of the Northern Eastern Fomal peoples of Lake County, and I am of Mexican and Mojave descent. And I chose to wear this bright red lipstick tonight, by the way. One, it makes me feel empowered. Two, because red is the color for the campaign for murdered and missing Indigenous women. So I wanted to honor that tonight also. So I'm going to read five poems tonight. The first one was actually written in a workshop with Linda Noel that she led. And it was part of a anthology called Awakened by Fire. Try to shy away from fire poems, because I know we're all probably tired of the fire. But I wanted to honor what came from Linda's workshop. This is called Water Hunt. When finding the roots of water, you have to take a long walk down new roads. You have to start by getting out of bed. So I begin wearing a yellow ochre sweater to match the haze in the air. Touring jeans and ash laid in shoes that make it obvious that I'm walking away from disaster and walking toward disaster. Taking the first few steps, all I see is exhaustion. I see a month's worth of sun turning red. A month of trees turning to charcoal. What I'm looking for is moisture. A cool drip or two to alleviate the heat of summer, the heat of death. It is easier to find death than water. Easier to carry the weight of sad bones than to find light in nerves. A glimmer in the legs, which takes so much effort to move. To find the roots of water, I have to dig deep. Deeper than only finding the shallow depth of a few well-known truths. Truth, my sister's ashes came home first. Truth, my dog's ashes came home second. Lie, I am okay. Because just when I thought I was gaining ground on the grieving, it was time to flee home. Time to see the fire. Time to run. To move with the pounding of buffalo rushing down mountainsides. To walk with the hillside lions also looking for water. With eyes wide open, I can see flames, but I can't see sky. I can't see the next day. I choke up a rib cage from crying out, piercing a water source reserved for moments of turmoil. That's how you know you've gotten down to the roots. When the gallons of water in internal form come pouring out. Thank you. This next poem I'm going to read is called Long Lost. 50X on the ranch, he says. 25 miles outside of Santa Fe, where he lives on leased land until one day a death. His voice now resurrecting like a new blue dawn. He has my same blood. No doubt it is as dark as night with shadows our family never speaks of. I don't tell him I write poems to stay alive. Nor that the scent of star jasmine arises when I remember he is my father's brother. How the fence along the backyard of my childhood home was lined with star jasmine. The smell conjures a question of how even I have been long lost. How, though childless, I have become a mother of forgetting. A mother of moving on, never stopping to wonder if the voices of men I used to know would one day come speaking out of the dark. Thank you. And this next one is a brand new poem. Just wrote it yesterday. And this is to be still is to be animal. How the sun glimmers and glistens through valley oaks on a rustic hillside. How the warmth permeates amber honey skin and a tense body loosens. How the ground cover of fallen autumn leaves aches of a soothing vibrancy. How I breathe between these happenings. How yearning for more makes the muscles weak turns the heart to a tiny blue egg in oval shape, a crack on all sides as if someone took it and threw it into the night sky. How the brittle shell was adorned with cornflower and flaxen. How I came home to myself after the breaking, half human, half bird. How winter frost is arriving again. How a hunger remains. How the burrowing owl and the American robin observe witnessing all of this. How they don't swallow time in the same way or long for difference. What if all of this was enough? Thank you. This next poem I wrote. Kim shot gracefully invited me to be to have a featured poem for the the San Francisco library's poem of the day. This was the poem I wrote for that. This is called where the wild ruminations are. An iris mountain stands parallel to the snow tips of other nearby hills. A drive out of state, a sunrise brewing. This is the place where forgiveness grows. As if a lost city in this wild nature. As if the city lost to material things and dissident living turned into dirt and animal land. Elemental necessity. A terra incognita, colorful and muted, rough and smooth, quiet and intense. Traveling along a state of disrepair than repair, I stopped to sit mountainside. Considering the ingredients of life to shovel into the ground. Pieces of gold into the cracks of a broken body. Fragments of feathers to fill the holes of a human heart. A spirit crafted prayer speaks of the crushing of onyx and obsidian. Of the cutting of bones and bones and the sifting of it all into the earth. A humming presses into the cold dirt. A drumming sound pumps into the silence. This is a letter to my fear deconstructed. A word painting of little white roses and little white crosses lined up in neat rows to represent the dead. The dead that keep walking along my path. The dead that have died a thousand times before their bodies followed suit. When the roads were taken, the paths cut off and they mourned the act of being mourned. When they had not forgotten, when they had not forgiven and I have not forgotten and I have not forgiven. We were all born from constellations, constellation shaped like Mexico. Depth as rich as our Mojave blood from original lands but never revered as such, not now nor in the afterlife. I hide invisible prayers in soda pockets to ask for forgiveness. To unpack my own entangled bones. To give up the ghosts. To remain soft. To honor storylines. To remove the flowery pain I wear like an old dress. To believe despite lifelines of pain my heart is not made of raw stone but warm honey. The amber liquid solidifying to become a kind of archaeology, a fossil of beauty in this agony found everywhere. Inside a language, inside a refuge of umber skin, my love the color of rhubarb even when hidden deep down and hard to bring to the surface. Yerba Buena stopped growing from my mother's hands in 1995. Now I fill a used blue bottle with wild oats and a wild clock, reconciling time loss and time revived. I drink history, begging my backyard environment of geranium and oaks of aloe and dahlias to take me with them. To see me through their lens. To tell me I deserve to deserve to be where I am, where I am. Thank you. I have one more poem, but should I end there? I'm gonna make sure I don't go over time. I have one more poem. Okay, cool. So this next poem, my last poem, is called As the Peppermint Grows. Something in this life is not functioning. Today, a hungry blue morning hangs on to an emptiness. Glass remnants made from rose quartz are not enough protection from this, how they are perfectly round. And when they dropped one by one against the hardwood floor, the sound was rain falling on rooftops. In this house grows citronella and remorse. Between the ever so small branches of the potted willow on the front porch is nausea and desire. Sharing the wind with hanging coconut husks and aluminum pipes. I have made a home of a place that does not speak to me in sonnet. An age old bluebird on the windowsill, a delicate simplicity without a voice box. A table centerpiece of flicker and dove feathers do not say a single word. Regarding the quiet as a deserved nothing, I cannot feel the want with precision. It strikes at the bottom of every discarded poem. I'm still holding my breath since our eyes met. I spritz rose water on my tired face to soak up tears after listening to your voice. I feel myself becoming immune to a royal lupins and clocks painted black. How will I know the time left to speak truths? I have made myself a fool. One who tells of the heart solely to the milkweed, afraid of the end all of a rejected plea or reciprocation. How would the conversation go? That the trees have lost their leaves, that the weather is not changing? That I love you and I don't know how to say it. That the peppermint plant outside is reaching for the ground, the thicket of greenery hiding me in a new grove. Where I don't need to tell how to be alone is effortless. But to say love is a catastrophe. Say I was the only damsel who saw the dark woods in my own face. That distress still makes a noise when no one else is there to witness it. That torment and tenderness is not a pretty elixir, no matter how fluid the words sound together. Say this poem is not getting to the point. I love you. I wonder if I say it, if you would, if I would, but maybe you never would. If I open my hands to find the harmony of transcendence and find them empty, would you find me in yours? Would you say it back? Tell me something. Tell me anything. Thank you so much. It's so good to hear you read in real time again. Thanks again. Many of Georgina's poems are medicine. I think probably that's true for all four of us, but you make that a very intentional part of your work. And I really appreciate it. Thank you for coming up here. Now, sometimes working cross-culturally, even, you know, within our own person, we have to make adjustments for things. And so what you're seeing in the order tonight is some careful negotiation between two different cultural iconographies. As a technical point, Denise Lowe had the highest rank of all of us, politically, having that. Yeah, she's going to make a mistake. I'm embarrassing. The reality is that she was the poet laureate of Kansas, which is a whole state. And technically, probably should have gone next because as the host, I have to both open it up and then cut the form loose at the end. But because we're in California, I gave precedence to California native people, which neither Denise nor I are. So if people occasionally find it difficult to navigate indigenous cultural rules, so do we. Denise is a good friend, published my last book, Whose Water, does a lot of really important publishing in our communities and is also really a kick-ass writer in pretty much every way. Our work has been in dialogue for a long time. We're from similar places, and I am really delighted to see her smile like this tonight. Denise Lowe. Wado Wanishi. Very grateful for your comments. I would make you all aware of the fact there were cows than people in Kansas. So technically I'm sort of the poet laureate of a lot of cows and a few people. So, you know, this is not like I was king of or queen of the poet world. Goodness knows, but I like cows and buffalo more so and beefalo, which a lot of the buffalo now, you know, like 40 to 60% of the buffalo now are beefalo technically. Anyway, I am grateful to be here in Sonoma County on the mountain of southern Pomo people known as Tsunno Mountain. The colonizers call it Fitch Mountain. And I will be referring to this in this fire poem that is pretty recent. This moment of danger while bridge fire 2020 haze of burning redwood's cloaks streets crows on on pavement hop sideways, one footed like the powwow dance crow hop, but off center feathers taffeta in the half white mask strangers walk by us not threatening but shielding from an invisible plague born on virus breath. All our lungs quiver inside our chest, hidden a two step song of murmurs. Tsunno Mountain sits wordless as wisps circle its top most pines and live folks morning sun barely remembers to return to this moon valley of vineyards and goats. Months ago, I crowded into a bar to hear a band singing like hiya style hi ho, a song for dancing crows and me, hi ho hi ho fire fire streets of playing danger, danger and beauty. I became very fond life. I've always been fond of buffalo and that's there are two things like this living in California. I've been here a year and a half. One is the sun sets the others the buffalo and that's about it the winds a lot better. This is called this is based on a true story where if you go through all these little towns in Kansas they all have buffalo heads mounted on the wall in your restaurants hotels hunting lodges everywhere. And so I started to think about that and what they you know of course it's it's a horrendous memory in some ways but there's at least it's a people have to confront it and what they mean. So this is called Buffalo heads and diners revenants. A scattered herd dots the planes detached heads mostly singletons old bowls and matriarchs white people shelter them under diner roofs or honey lodged trophy rooms within spotlight niches tongues cut out they cannot speak their history. With fake eyes they only listen to bar stories like the Colby cowboy who practices rodeo roping with quick twisting buffalo is much swifter than steers. Custer's last stand still gets repeated and Indian war battles less and less often beer drinkers mentioned huge bone piles left for my hunters for fertilizers. Heaped piles were final remnants of the bodies. Their descendants look more like beef alone but still Rome Hill some herded by part native cowboys. They still circle when coyotes howl and turn around and turn tail into North winds during blizzards never completely defeated. And I taught at Haskell Indian Nations University for 25 years. Raise your hand if you know where that is or what that is it's an intertribal federal tuition free and and I was fortunate to teach just about every nation when I was there. But when I first got there in the late 80s, I couldn't figure out what was wrong with people, the people who weren't there. And this is a poem, my poem about the boarding school system Bureau of Indian Affairs School 1985. After class the library director assigns girls to help with textbooks. They must wear skirts. The native powwow sponsor takes his pick by Thanksgiving three girls go home pregnant at the spring powwow relatives of the girls give the sponsor black eyes for regalia. One teacher fails thousands. No one good enough. Another tells students how done they are. Another gives everyone a's and leaves campus each morning by 10. Another leaves after lunch to teach at another college. Ceiling tiles are made of asbestos. Water fountains carry lead laced water. Walls hide black mold. Raid on blows and building foundations. And I just want to say this was it didn't matter what ethnicity these folks were they were there. I don't know what was wrong with them. They weren't fully human. So to something a little more cheerful. When I was in my late teens, my uncle took me to a mound that was in Tennessee that was later flooded. And this is Chote over hill town, which is in Cherokee country. And by Cherokee language teacher at Haskell I was lucky to audit some classes. Chote over hill town. Uncle loved the little Tennessee. He took me there to see Chote in a flood plain of corn fields. The mound rose eight feet. We stood silent a moment. He told me how elders traveled from Oklahoma each year for prayers. I remember that. As we talked a tan snail shell appeared in dirt, a spiral sent from those below. I carried it with me for years. Sunburned steam trails before the government took Chote to Nassie, to Motley, Toquat, Sitaco, Chilhaui, Tahlequah, Tallahassee. Bulldozers excavated all mounds. They split open Chote town. Skeletons went to research bins, artifacts were tagged and filed. In a letter, Cousin Robert writes, you remember Chote, Cherokee place of pilgrimage, stolen land. They flooded it. Katua people still pray near Chote. Their over hill fire burns all these years. A flame carried west to Tahlequah. I have breathed that smoke for this wado. I was been fortunate to go back to the land where my grandparents lived in a mixed remnant community. Not federally recognized in Kansas City, but that community has welcomed me even though my folks are from Ohio and New Jersey on the Delaware side, but they welcomed me and they meet and are trying to get federal or state recognition. They're having a heck of a time, but this is called a stomp dance, Wyandotte County. The lead man lifts his black hat and calls from the center. I wait for the tail end of the man-woman procession. Lead women are shell shakers, double-time steps, rustles, turtle shell rattles tied to shins. Men sing and sing loud. Women step-step hard. The inner circle turns sideways to the fire. My grandfather and grandmother lived on Lenape land near this spot. Their footprints remain in the ground. The leader raises his arm for each new song. Men answer. Their breath lifts with smoke. I remember Josiah, what he said about tobacco. The head man offers prayers. I remember the Fall leaf family and their stomp ground near Copan. I remember Cherokees who danced Redbird Smith's Descendants Crossland and Benny. She shush mixes with songs older than the mounds. And I'll end with, thank you. I'll end with one more. Green again. Our primate eye cones absorb blues, greens, reds. My love, your eyes taste of willow groves, not mangoes. Pond water pools in my mouth. The Cherokee word is itsy-oosty, make green, renew oneself, oosty, young one. We plant seeds. Jade maize emerges. The child in my belly dreams green. Underfoot, azillion grass blades rise. They feed everybody. Our hunter eyes scan. Brown like soil, our fingers rustled sedges, waiver barely visible in swamp water. Gentle motions of khaki, catfish whiskers, barbells, smell and taste in a single gesture. Always hungry. Thank you. Thank you so much, Denise. I always love you. Can you put a link to Mammoth Publications in the chat, please? Sure, sure. Denise publishes a lot of incredible things that you could only benefit by reading and not, I'm not talking about my work per se. Our next reader is Lynda Noel, who's a good friend. Let's just say about Lynda's work. She's the former laureate of Kaia, California. I make sure to book her as regularly as possible at reading so that I can feel real. I love you to bits, Lynda. That's what you got. Must unmute yourself, darling. Okay, okay. I'm going to do some seasonal things. So I'm going to start with an acorn poem because it's acorn time. I haven't gathered, but my sister has. And in case people don't know it, when you gather acorns, of course, it's kind of like gathering walnuts, but that's just where the work begins and believe me, it is work. And so this is kind of an acorn song and it's old. Where the circle began in this creation, a sprout from a nut, a seed fallen from the tree, it would sprout, white oak, tan oak, red oak, black oak, leaf and bark, ripe food fallen, autumn moon. A seed, a nut to feed a people, a seed, a stem, a leaf, a tree, a nut, a seed, surviving through cement in a field of debris, your leafs glitter amidst an above glass and black rubber. Heart of oak sprout through asphalt, fed by rain by sun, from green to brown to naked to new leaf, uncurling to acorn to seed, a circle of sprout and food, circle of seed of sprout of food, ripeness, wind or time unhinges your bounty right on time. Each autumn day you are undressed by wind, in shadows of oak creation lingers and lives in a circle of seed and sprout of stem and leaf of trunk and branch of leaf and acorn nut seed. In the sunlight through oak, sustenance remains and dwells in flesh and pulp and shell and hull and drop in crack, in the worm curled into a circle within acorn and gall. Green leaf, yellow spotted falls beside acorn, they are relatives of trunk, branch and bark. Gathering acorn in autumn's gold angled light, voice of harvest on every fallen leaf and nut. We are brought to your shade and shady edges to gather your fallen fruit seed nut food. We assemble and gather beneath your strong arms, harvest of flesh of oak fruit nut fruit of oak because of oak we gather to eat to breathe the same circle. Human and oak interwoven deer and woodpecker connected by food of oak. In the old way days a million nuts might not make you wealthy, but ensure survival through winter. Another circle made of oak and acorn, woodpecker and deer, like salmon like deer, willow and mushroom like humans and moon and sun and earth and daylight and darkness. Oak feeds our existence, being here, continuance. Having traveled in the mouth of woodpecker to the oil slick power pole and fallen from there, you sprout and stretch to the vibration and buzz. Between the beak of woodpecker acorns fate is sealed. Basketful of acorns can lighten the dark of winter. There is rhythm in stone on stone stories told in the pounding seed nut between each stroke. Show me the grind and the swing of stone in hand to stone of stones from seed to meal. An ancient doing with stone and swing stone on stone acorn flesh between. Washed by cedar, sweet your bitterness varies. Cedar washed again and again and again and again cedar washed bitter cleansed smooth scent of cedar. Hours spent at the edge of sand dripping water into the ground heart of acorn cedar laced. We talk while we wash you we sing softness and sweet cedar into your taste into our mouths. Cedar and sand brought together to soften to sweeten to please our waiting mouths. We call it labor making a circle from tree to food make a meal out of nuts out of tree out of an acorn. Eat the flesh ground fine given to feed no sand in my mouth only warmth and goodness. We live together since the beginning into the forever you feed us we make offerings of song of prayer of thanks together we make a circle. Stone you are a tree we are a people together we make a circle. So thank you for the acorns who come to us and we're very, very important in our existence. But before the rain comes we need to gather the acorns but I want to sing a song. I mean I want to sing a song about rain because we need rain terribly. Rain belief swollen sky sing us some rain sway oak arms shed your blue clothing let free your moist flesh flung against bone windows flaunt your sleek body fly above thirsty dreams fall into my stretched canyon throat fill my river up fool me into thinking wetness is enough watch me flood myself feed the memory melt mountains make mud. Another kind of seasonal poem. Salmon flesh beneath moon a feast is near. That fish in night sky going up river heading home this acorn time names his journey calls him back to beginnings called back to a soft circle belly flaming red fire flesh feeding an October night flight of fish across a frozen sky with skin of stars. I have seen that same stark colored salmon flickering in another river, not named sky but not far from here. Several nights back. I stopped at that river and moon gay streaks cut by fish splitting a silver ribbon of water which was on that particular night. A lean woman body swaying and dancing the river motion beneath moon. I'm going to do a couple of more recent poems and the first one is called nowhere. And it's nowhere with the word of knowledge, K and O W nowhere. You come from your beginning is seated deep in the red soil of your blood. You make the effort to know where and are willing to go there no matter where the map leads nowhere is a place of gathering knowledge to know yourself your blood your breath, your belief to know where a gesture or deed possesses ancient ancient meaning and is a circle to hear nowhere to recognize the motion of goodness and acknowledge in thanks to nowhere. You are an intricate part of all creation, a stitch a song leading to nowhere grace and kindness is woven into stars whose life is to spend until they fall. And your eyes nowhere to see the thread in star prints on the river of your blood flowing nowhere. The sun sets and moon rises rain falls and rivers grow life begins and the last breath is taken where blue air ends and black air begins nowhere to touch endings and beginnings, takings and giveings black and blue. Because I wore black consecutive years blue because my eyes could have become sapphire from the inside out black because charcoal would have been smeared over my face blue because the color of the sky became black. Blue because my prince staggered across moon black because the bruise was deep and lasting misshaped and borderless black because my tongue struggled to sound words blue because Christ song could have strangled me tied a black bow around my neck. Blue surrounding the clouds in eyes indigo of dusk shadowing each hour black shadow edged inside and blue the color of coyotes voice warped and hovering over the valley floor black and icy on mountains face shadow shadow shadow shadow in and beneath my eyes voice gesture and view season of the lasting beyond each moon thin blue lines between each eyelash each teeth black line between every thought the color of grief call it bereavement time of sorrow offer condolence words of solace here the tear fall off the face hit the air and dissolve. Okay, I'm going to finish with this one. It's untitled. Well, I thank him and I'm glad to be here with Georgina and Denise. And hope we can all whether this storm were under not just nationally but worldwide and remain in our own doings and deeds of goodness. This is untitled and the clouds spoke that day and the wind that fluttered their flat bottom voice ripple through the velocity velocity of her car motion mocking the shoreline in an awakening inside her blood the sound decipherable only to the mystery of silence. Here is the white against blue like her mountain veins sky and timber and river motion moon and snow and stars and sun shown a different hue and tone a wind blown blossoms unfolding in red deep parts of her. Thank you so much. Oh wow thank you so much Linda love your work. Thank you. I have a couple of poems to share just a couple. I also want to say it's really good to see you here Sherry thank you for coming. Another spectacular indigenous poet. This is called watershed village sites still sing resonate through hidden shell mounds from every watershed that wraps these hills on thicker nights like the songs throb through the sidewalks through the bark of bay trees in the ache of full bloom and every angled slab of rock peering through the hillside around rocky point and Glen Park Canyon. Remember the true name and call them out like birds do announcing boundaries unseen but heard if this is for their still joy in the hillside the water still runs here. Now. This is not nearly so cheerful. Very much where my take my paycheck and indigenous people who die of old age in bed. The supplies they sent were body bags because we're measured in scars in trauma in curable but no less deadly disease. Because we're measured by the inmates that vanished the couldn't afford school because we're measured in teeth removed before our skulls stolen as they were from our graves cracked by grinding in sleep in stress our return. Because the commodity can said fish but was full of tales and bones and there is no running water. Because in order to read a book about a city Indian who isn't an addict who isn't beaten by a boyfriend who doesn't die in the first chapter, I had to write the fucker my own cell. The price of my work has changed. Now. I really appreciate you all being here. Thank you so much. Thank you to all of our readers. Thank you, Georgina. Thank you, Denise. Thank you, Linda. I do really appreciate cherry coming. Thank you for being here. Mary, Mary, thank you for being here. We share some friends. And thank you to the library.