 He's a 2014 Lambda Literary Fellow, and he's the recipient of the 2011 Alfred C. Carey Prize for Poetry. And this is his book, Angel Park, and it just came out on Friday. Please welcome Roberto F. Santiago. When I first came here, I just moved here in July, the first reading that I came to was a radar reading, and it was because of Baruch who's sitting right there, who's awesome. He brought me here, and it was the first reading that I was like, oh, I have to do this, I want to be a part of this. It was mostly because of this really pink wall, and also the people that read were awesome. So before I actually read anything from Angel Park, I wanted to read something pretty new, and it's actually published by CrabFat, and it'll be out next month, and it's probably a little more ambitious because, like I said, I think I have kind of a cold, but who cares, we'll just go for it. So this one is titled Meet You Downstairs, and it's Amy Winehouse's response to a poem written about her in the Paris Review. So Meet You Downstairs. A poet is nothing within the scheme of my years. Just another rugged rum-runner, run-ragged, trying to pacify the what's inside that never dies. I told you, you should be stronger than me. A breathless blackened cat-eye spilled onto the kitchen floor. I swam on Billy's holiday, pedal-eared between tattoos of pin-ups. I waged wars unholy while in bed, chest pained, only to awake a singer, singular, your same old safe bet. And you can't help but analyze my action. You see, everything was handed to you free, cause you're just a little boy underneath all that. And all I can ever be to you is 27 darkness and no, no, no. Treading water's time and edge will only hold me for so long. An unforgotten poet dies a hundred times. Halftime cherry, wooden string, bow-tied, Moschino brawl, ribbon-wrapped, and frank take the box to withdraw as inevitable. And I wish I can say you broke my heart. But that's something three poems can never do. So take them back. Take the whole box. Marlboro, red, beasties, tea, outsiders, and my new buttoot. Half-smoke verses that chorus the spaces between ears, both yours and mine. I had 68 days, maybe 69, but never more. How much more torture would you have put me through? So that's for Amy. I actually wrote that poem because I read the poem in the Paris Review, and it annoyed me because I didn't think it was a very good poem. You can tell him I said that if you know who wrote it. So, Angel Park, it's right here. It's cute. It looks like a little building block. It probably took me about all my life to write because it's semi-autobiographical, which is about 16 years. Thank you. But consistently writing it and rewriting it, I would say about seven years, which feels like a really long time. But I'm so glad that it's here now. And the way that I broke it up is into three different parts. The first part is home, so I'm going to read a little bit from each section, and then I'll read a little bonus poem that I've actually never read out loud because it's so new that the ink is still wet. So I'll just go into that. So home is a section that deals with family, mostly the matriarchs that have made me the fabulous gay person that's in front of you right now. And a big part of why I wanted to get this book published now was because I wanted my grandmother to have a book that she could read while she's still here, so she's a big inspiration for this. Much of the chagrin of my paternal grandmother who is not mentioned here at all. So here's the first one. It's titled A Blessing. By the ankles she was held above my head. Her eyes, wide as malice, stared beyond me. Abuela Sala was full of cigar smoke and rhythm of cankeros. The men and women danced in white skirts, beads and arms waving like flags and wore as if they had all been absolved from the sins of revolution. As she was lowered towards me, her wings unfurled, a wreath of ivory pliant as a lover's apology. In her descent, her wings began to jutter like the dancers. With each flutter, the percussion brightened in tempo and tense. La Gagina was not scared. She knew exactly what was happening. Abuelita whispered smoke into her ear before she snapped her neck. So it's kind of the type of party that I used to go to when I was little. This next one is titled Collecting Spanishes. And a big thing that I've been obsessed with is translation and how there's so many different versions of the Spanish that I grew up with. There's my grandmothers, my mothers, my fathers, my grandfathers. So this is just trying to document how different those Spanishes were. And it's titled Collecting Spanishes. Abuelita's English was just like her bread pudding, punctuated with raisins nobody ever asked for, condensed milk contradictions, fattening tenses, cinnamon questions and eggshell. Bapi Spanish was a group of poets' workshopping, not overly concerned with agreement and never without purpose. I don't ever remember him speaking in enneas to me, but I loved him most when he spent all his accents on mama. Mama Spanish was slow-moving silkworms. She sometimes threaded stars into Greek myth and lullaby. Other times she tangled words into ivory, wrapping up a building brick by brick. Abuelo Spanish folds itself into English tea sandwiches. Cucumber and watercress covered in adobo y habichuela negra. I never tasted that recipe. He wasn't around often enough for them to be prepared, and something like that doesn't really keep well. This next one is a real New York one, so I want to dedicate this one to Miguel, who's right there in the front row. I miss his birthday tomorrow, so you should give him a hug and tell him happy birthday. This one's titled City Island in the 90s. So City Island is a place where you, if you were in the Bronx or in New York, you would go there as soon as the seafood was ready, and it was the best place to get the worst type of greasy, nasty food. So it's a big part of my childhood. So I'm going to share it with you. City Island in the 90s. Dodo la familia hops into the little blue Ford Taurus. The tape deck DJ shotguns the playlist bringing the concourse to the water. Tummies rumble to the beat of a freestyle snare based rattles the Styrofoam cooler in the trunk. Salsa, trumplets, treble twists, new car scent out of the little tree that hangs off the rearview mirror. We're off to Johnny's. Boppy always orders baskets of oil sizzle streaming shrimp on a bed of shoestring potatoes sliced with the skin still on. Are you hungry? Mama bays her grease limp fries in Tabasco and professes to them her undying love. The kids carry trays of not enough napkins, too many straws, and a rainbow pallet of plastic cups to catch up tartar and cocktail and hot sauce. Even though we all got the same thing, hands always reach across the table to double dip the secret sauce concoction I made by mistake on purpose. Sitting on chain link benches, we'd sway to the breeze keeping an eye on the seagulls. Over the years, they got pretty smart. The dirty pickpockets work in teams. One dives next to you and gets your attention while the other one steals one of your fries. The teamwork ends. Feathers fly into a pay-per-view fight over a half-eaten fry and we love to watch them. Soaring white-winged rats squeak in squawk symphonies that sound like TKA, like Nocera, like Nayobi, like La India. I thought, did you see what Clara is wearing? Sí, pero también, did you see whose husband she was with? Mm-hmm, loca. The birds and the chisme harmonize. In the book it says bochinche, but I had to say chisme because I know where I am. This next section is titled Away, and it's about all of the different institutions, either museums and colleges, and just going to these different places that transform you in a way, and I guess libraries too, I should say. And this one is titled Two Old Ladies at the Met Staring at a Mural. This is art? You don't think so? I'm asking you. This is what the Met calls art. Is it a painting? I think it's a collage, magazine, clippings, and the building dressed as neon, paint and lights. The shout of a liquor store, Marquis sings jazz to the kids without parents smashing like atoms against the pavement. It's really colorful. Yeah, but the kids are smaller than the mousetrap. Isn't the tablecloth pretty? And why is the mousetrap in color but not the kids? The green and white polka dots. Yeah, but that's where they eat. Why put a trap on a table? The building's lovely. Pink and yellow, yellow and brick. Glassless windows, rust for a mattress, and a table of splintered knots all sit together in a room where a mousetrap babysits the kids. Where are the parents? There seems to be a mother and father on the corner. They're dressed nicely, maybe for church. What kind of church wouldn't allow children? Baptist? I would never leave my children home alone, even on a Sunday. The women on the corner are wrapped in white ermine and the men in freshly steamed and feathered hats. Why are all the colored people so sad? The sky is the color of a sky interrupted by shapes of clouds. I don't think you should say colored. The empire scrapes the uptown sunset and the black and tangle oppies panhandle the edge where Lennox bends into 132nd. Why not? They are colored. You were marked on the colors of the buildings, not the people. Why is what you said okay, but what I said isn't? That was actually kind of a real conversation that happened. And I decided it was worth writing about, I guess. This next one is titled A Year Without. My best friend passed away. It'll be five years ago this July. So I tried to write a poem every year talking about what it was to be without him, which is... it got more difficult as time went on, but this is the first one. It's titled A Year Without. I'm not ready for this year to end. With both hands at the edges, I tried to pierce dates back together and needle and thread dawn upon dusk so that another year or another summer won't wither-fade like rose thorns and greeting cards. If I permit this year to pedal and waft to the cement, then you never really were. If I, by some magic, were able to circle the earth, reverse the jet stream, pull the stratosphere closer, stop minutes from devouring seconds, catch you before you hit the pavement, separate sand from sea, pull myself through the eye of a needle, setting a drop, a dromedary, maybe you wouldn't be gold markings on ribbons and kind words whispered from the arms of strangers. If memories or fireflies gliding mid-air, fragile moth-winged moments, I would reach up and pull you back, placing time into a mason jar before this year becomes another and another becomes a stumble-blur. If there could be nothingness for a second, there would be you. I don't think that poem gets easier to say aloud every year. It actually gets harder in a different way. But I'm very glad that I wrote it, and I'm sure that he likes it. Or if he doesn't, he's not here, so who cares? This next one is... So one of my favorite movies is All About My Mother, and so I wrote this because I was so angry that I didn't actually write that last scene where the woman, Uma Oroho, was actually practicing for a play. So I thought, I'm just gonna write it anyway. I don't care. So it has a very long title, and it's called There Are People Who Think Children Are Made In A Night But It Takes Time, A Very Long Time. I gave you the devil in me. Graffiti stains the names I chose on everything from greasy or pizza plates to old love letters. I bled hearts and Psalms inky blue to cover up my mistakes. You know what it's like watching your only son from the distance of arms, but unlike you, I had no third day promise, no cross and spear, no virgin birth, no right hand to ascend and smite. You left me with the monstrance of glass and topaz. When you gave him to me, I waited to tell everyone. Didn't buy anything, didn't paint his room, didn't even look at wire hangers, crochet needles or the bales of pink or blue yarn as I got off to the bus for my monthly, then bi-weekly, then weekly appointments. I took all the vitamins I could swallow, hoarded money in a college fund, but when you took my son, I pulled earth to my cheek, tar and asphalt. He was split between two yellow lines. I soaked my hands in him and licked the red from the webs between my fingers, because it was mine. So this last section is titled Far Away, and it was where I started to delve into myth and like much more esoteric versions of travel. And this first poem is called Rooftop Kingdom, and I was trying to figure out whether or not I should say this, but I'm going to say it anyway. It's a really pretty poem in my mind, but it's actually just about a rooftop low job, so that's information that isn't in the book secretly. Rooftop Kingdom. He is the shadow of a hunter under his shirt, brave in the bottle longing for the bird's feather-flitten song, long before the first notes of moon splintered across his smile. His hands, rope and knot us above the city, press whisper into my neck and the light of sound swivel sway the currency. His intent, encased in silence, a handful of stones, darkness, a glasshouse neuron, synapses butterflies that leave scars. He bows, allowing my hands to trace the lattice whirl and lace of his crown. Do you have time for two more or one more? All right, so I'll skip to the one that I've actually never done out loud, which is probably a bad idea, but who cares? So it's called Dearly Departed, and like I said, I'm really obsessed with this idea of translation, and I like the idea that there are certain words that can't be translated really easily into English, and in one of my workshops, this one poet brought up Saudaji, which is about this deep longing and missing, and it takes more than a few words to describe it, so I decided to write a poem about it, and it's titled Dearly Departed, and it's an exclusive for you guys. Saudaji means missing more than absent means broken off at the hilt or unable to forge a sickle sharp enough to protect yourself from yearning. Saudaji means missing as much as semi-free, why don't you bathe? Means, oh, sentiment, we're gonna run due. Means I changed, means I can't, means I won't, means another sorry without I am. Saudaji means missing as much as unrequited means longing for remedy or respite from the ills of spirit which prayer cannot definitively calm, imprison or destroy. Saudaji means missing as much as tears mean joy or pain or I'm still not okay means I wish I never met you or empty means full of regret or without means I hate not having. Saudaji means missing as much as periphery means tracing a land's borders where time can only be measured in distance from another land and the inevitable elastic return. Saudaji means missing as much as you playing the victim means me winning an argument we didn't even know we were having means fuck you for leaving, fuck you even more for coming back. Thank you very much. Thanks Roberto of Santiago. Our next reader is here from Vancouver and it's Amber Dawn. She's right here before. She's a writer, filmmaker, a performance artist and the author of the Lambda award-winning novel Sub Rosa, so my favorite books ever.