 Hello and welcome everyone. Thanks for coming to this month's literary program, a partnership with Nomadic Press. I'm John Smalley, a librarian with the General Collections and Humanities Department in the main library. While we're waiting for a few more people 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 ancestral homeland of the Ramatishaloni who are the original inhabitants of the San Francisco Peninsula. As the indigenous stewards of this land and in accordance with their traditions, the Ramatishaloni have never ceded, lost, nor forgotten their responsibilities as the caretakers of this place. As guests, we who reside in their traditional territory recognize that we benefit from living and working in their traditional homeland, and we wish to pay our respects by acknowledging the ancestors, elders, and relatives of the Ramatish community and by affirming their sovereign rights as First Peoples. Now, about a few of our upcoming events. This Tuesday, July 26, the author and eco-activist Jennifer Atkinson, who is a specialist in climate anxiety, will be exploring the mental health toll of our warming world and offer strategies to channel dark emotions toward climate justice and solutions. This Wednesday, author Ursula Pike discusses her new book An Indian Among Los Indígenas, A Native Travel Memoir. She'll be discussing that book with novelist Michelle Lapeña. And next Sunday, July 31, in the Coret Auditorium, which is just across the hall here, the Indian-born American photographer, conservationist, and writer, Supankar Banerjee, will speak out about art, social transformation, and a library, a classroom, and the world, which is a project of his that was featured in the 2022 Venice Biennale Art Exhibition. So today's program is part of a month-long series of programs at the library, devoted to nature, the environment, and climate. You can learn more about these programs from the flyers that are there on the table, and you can also find them listed in our library newsletter. On the same table are coffee and cookies. Please help yourself to those. And lastly, you can find all about our events by visiting the event calendar on our webpage, sfpl.org. So this ends my announcements about programs. I'll now turn the microphone over to J.K. Fowler, publisher of Nomadic Press, who will introduce today's program and readers. Please give a warm welcome to J.K. Thank you, John. Thank you all for being here today and spending a little bit of your afternoon with us on your Sunday. We are going to start with Terita McKell. Terita McKell, story medicine woman, is a Bay Area-based poet, educator, elocutionist, activist for holism called Word Magician and a UC Berkeley Bay Area Writing Project Fellow. She was also recently announced as the poet-in-residence at Moed. So definitely check out that. Synchronicity, the Oracle of Sun Medicine, released in February of 2020, was nominated for the California Book Award and reviewed in Ishmael Reed's Conch-Zine January 2022 by Chris Stofolino. She is co-author and curator of East Side Arts Alliance's Patrice Lumumba Anthology, released in 2021 both by Nomadic Press. She was published in Jack Hirschman's Last Anthology, Building Socialism in March 2021 and was aired on KALW Bay Area Poets Black History Month in February of 2022. Let's give a warm welcome to Terita McKell. Thank you all for being here. There's a lot happening this this weekend and I'm very honored to Can you hear me now? Is that better? Okay. Very honored to be here among such fine poets and just be in the family of Nomadic because wow, the vision, the voices. Well, I'm going to move right into it looking at the little ones here. I am going to read Innocent Memories and it will be in the forthcoming book. Warm, moist breeze stream in and out olfactory after rains bearing thoughts of who I am reoccurring dreams limitless framed wonders flowers, birds trees, bees, tiny feet buzzing and so many birds and mees, yous and mees wind spinning earth spells pregnant under dark cloud silver lines billowing high, showing off sun's water mist insist on rainbow that day as I the mystical child imagines this where God lives smiling, watching earth smile back in her black fertile dampness I'd love to play and make mud cakes watch my mother and father plant gardens in so many colors so many trees so many yous and mees yous and mees it's so big in everywhere I run in my garage frightened of who I am and wonder who am I to be subject to the awe of all of this who am I there's a poem that's being asked to read here oh gosh okay there we go there we go this poem is entitled forgive us for the indigenous people around the world we have sinned missed the mark the mark of your teachings that kill us we should be grateful to die in light of your God's word and dishonor the heavens we witness with our eyes did not mean to spot your knife that cut backbone snake from body's tree of knowledge that was our way of understanding did not mean to smell listen or be aware of feet fin feather relatives warn us of coming fires storms quakes or tsunamis forgive us for looking to them for protection though they have saved us many times please forgive that which sustains our lives forgive us for being crippled by that loss did not mean to be aware of medicines from flora fauna tree star seed reasoned by seasons forgive our ancestors who have left us this healing speech did not mean to dishonor your God for our great mother father on this earth in heaven you call hell did not mean to miss the mark of your consent or be ungrateful this is our son great learned father priest your guns hanging beheadings and exiles from homeland have convinced us your God is powerful forgive us for judging your vicar of Christ God spells that tell us we must wait for your God son to return and ignore son's light return every day forgive us for we are sure you believe your God is the only true living God and everything that has provided nourishment and protection before your arrival to our lands is evil born of lucifer your light devil forgive us the displeasure we see in your eyes as we celebrate existence through ritual rites sow seed harvest dance sing drum and embrace one another in presence of nuns or priest for this too you say is immoral forgive us if we do not see or understand your God's love perhaps it was lost in translation English gives us headaches your words remove much from our world we fear anger, grief and confusion will consume our children's future who like us will be forced to believe this land is not alive and listening forgive the discomfort you see in our eyes for anesthetizing our flesh with pipe or drink from sacred trees that temporarily ease slaughter of our legacy born broken according to your God's word we have sinned missed the mark and instead eagerly await the fate of your father in heaven that shames our existence on earth forgive us if we do not know how to deify your intelligence that chooses to house the likeness of your God's only son's murder nailed to a cross upon walls that conceal sun from sky we hear your church say amen desert earth woman children and bear witness your worship is a worship against life forgive us and this is another poem coming up in the book in the bee breathe breathe in the bee jinn sing black balum boom boom bee bop ear eye drop dream translucent wings reverent effervescent feathers favor raven magic tether star shine clothed in glitter red yellow green purple gold mine dance a spiral round roots tally ground wire imbue remember light seed deed drum heart lung tongue stars rhythm sung long time ago revolutions evolution you and I verse planets seat rock steady beat arms legs feet wave weave in heat moon mounts magnetic mystery bring back the honey bees please and swing low my sweet chariot let us ride home heavens sunflower has thrown us this throne of hallelujah parallel strings orchestrating DNA's helix springs springing up children prophets circulating circuitries generating generations of yin yang prophecy radicals radiating isheolua kulepacho the word nomo will not be destroyed in the bee jinn sing g-force spiraling cannot gain say nor resist the gravity of matter and I guess I'll end with right I just have one more I think yes so this is called the Goldilocks cover up and everyone is familiar with this um I will read it from this plaque here because it's yes this is done in the form of a news brief and it's also in the book this is the BWIB news be watching your back the Goldilocks cover up this just in tonight Goldilocks celebrates in three bears home three bears charge Goldilocks aka the golden bandit with a legal entry among several other crimes implicated early Tuesday morning witnesses say the intrusion took place just after the family left for a walk in the woods it was stated when golden bandit knocked on the door and no one answered she let herself in moments after alleged robbery a witness on the wing said quote I saw bandit steal and consume bears food vandalized the furniture and sleep in baby bears bed unquote investigators confirmed strands of blonde hair found in baby bears bed did match that of golden bandit further investigations prove that the fried chicken cornbread sweet potatoes and corn sore clothing of golden bandit was indeed taken from bears stole day of alleged break in however despite evidence leaning heavily against golden bandit bandit stated when the bears arrived home from their walk in the woods I feared for my life a witness on the prowl confirmed bandit's accusation stating that he in fact bandit flee from bears home screaming repeated allegations of rape and attempted murder bandit's father a superior court judge stated he would prosecute the bears to the fullest extent of the law and signed warrants for their arrest mr. and mrs. bear held in mad poly trick county jail sued golden bandit for a legal entry theft vandalism loitering and defamation of character the bears also sued for reparations they claim is due for injustices such as these reoccurring in their families history for the past 500 plus years sadly however child protection services have placed baby bear in foster care until courts can further decide whether or not mr. and mrs. bear are fit parents to raise baby in a safe healthy environment that's it for tonight this has been the bwyb news saying we tell the truth about the ferries on your tail thank you very much thank you for inviting me let's keep it going for a while so all of the readers that you'll hear today have books of course with nomadic press tarida actually appears of course we have her book synchronicity also appears in painting the streets as well as patrice lamumba anthology so just up here on the table we have painting the streets which features murals that went up in oakland between may and october of 2020 but it also puts it within the historical context of the long tradition in this country of fights for freedom and against injustice and so we have writings by robin dg kelly we have an interview in there with tongo eisen martin and emery douglas so definitely check that out and then we have an 81 card to row deck to row in pandemic and revolution as 27 different visual artists it's 43 different poets that wrote original poems for each card so definitely check it out up next we have rafael jesus gonzalez who wrote this beautiful book flower of jade rafael professor emeritus of literature and creative writing was born and raised on the alpaso texas seo dadwara's chihuahua border he taught at various universities before settling at lani college in oakland where he founded the department of mexican and latin american studies in 1969 he was poet and resident at oakland museum of california and oakland public library in 1996 also a visual artist his work has been exhibited at the oakland museum of california and the mexican museum of san francisco among others four times nominated for a push cart prize he was honored for his writing by the national council of teachers of english in 2003 and he received a cesar chavez lifetime achievement award in 2013 and won from the city of berkeley in 2015 in 2017 he was named berkeley's first poet laureate let's give a warm welcome to rafael jesus gonzalez when i started this good afternoon it is my custom to open my readings or public presentations at the risk of setting off fire alarms to burn a little sage a little fragrance smoke seed grass or copal or whatever is available to invoke the gods of the goddesses that they be witness that what i say is truth and if it's not it is by mistake and not intent because it was the custom of my ancestors of the central plateau of mexico for whom speaking in public was a sacred act i have chosen to share with you this evening this afternoon four poems the just number in now a mythology the first one is merely a poem of celebration of the earth and jk has mentioned that i was born and raised in the alpasa waters area right on the border of mexico and the united states so consequently i grew up disbelieving in borders and heir to two muses one speaks spanish and the other english and 99.9% of my work is in both languages Bajo monte Shasta Bajo el monte sagrado cuyas nieves serran los prados de la pantera poniéndose la luna temprana tras los pinos y los cedros las galaxias giran sobre nosotros se desprende una estrella brillante y fugaz somos tan cabales que ni se nos ocurre pedir un deseo de la luna Bajo el monte sagrado cuyas nieves se desprende las panterras las alpas y los cedros las galaxias giran sobre nosotros una estrella se desprende brillante y fugaz somos tan cabalesnaire y fugaz se desprende las panterras doble en 2005 I was invited to present a paper and to present readings at the world congress of poets in china in Taishan china and to my fellow poets from around the world, many of which did not speak either of my two languages, English or Spanish, and mauled it over and over. Driving back home from my visit to Nuevo Mexico and New Mexico, which is a sacred land for me, this came to me. Si no hablamos. Si no hablamos para lavar a la tierra, es mejor que guardemos silencio. Lo al aire que llena el fuego y el pulmón y alimenta la sangre del corazón que lleva la luz, el olor de las flores y los mares, los cantos de las aves, y el oído del viento que conspira con la distancia para hacer azul el monte. Loa al fuego que alumbre el día y calienta la noche. Cuece nuestro alimento y da ímpetu a nuestra voluntad que es el corazón de la tierra, este fragmento de lucero que quema y purifica por bien o por mal. Loa al agua que hace a los ríos y a los mares que da sustancia a las nubes y a nosotros que hace verde a los bosques y los campos que hincha el fruto y envientra nuestro nacer. Loa a la tierra que es el suelo, la montaña y las piedras que lleva los bosques y es la arena del desierto que nos forma los huesos y sala a los mares la sangre que es nuestro hogar y sitio. Si no hablamos en alabanza la tierra, si no cantamos en festejo a la vida, es mejor que guardemos silencio if we do not speak, if we do not speak to praise the earth, it is best we keep silent. Praise hair that fills the bellow of the lung and feeds our heart's blood that carries light, the smell of flowers and the seas, the songs of birds and the winds howl that conspires with distance to make the mountains blue. Praise fire that lights the day and warms the night, cooks our food and gives motion to our wills that is the heart of earth, this fragment of a star that burns and purifies for good or ill. Praise water that makes the rivers and the seas, that gives substance to the cloud and us, that makes green the forests and the fields, that swells the fruit and wombs our birth. Praise earth that is the ground, the mountains and the stones, that holds the forest and is the desert sands, that builds our bones and salts the seas, the blood, that is our home and place if we do not speak in praise of the earth. If we do not sing in celebration of life, it is best we keep silence. Cuando, cuando en unas tierras, la luz se apague por huracán y tormenta y otros por sequía se hagan infiernos. Los ríos solo lechos de guijas o sus aguas hechas veneno, todo por causa de nuestro abuso. Recurriremos a nuestro Dios que nos declaró dueños de la tierra, clamando que nos salve. A little reminder from the book of our myths, God blessed them and said to them, be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish and the sea and the birds and the sky and over every living thing that moves upon the earth. From the book of Genesis of the Bible, when in some lands the light is shut by hurricane and storm and others by drought made infernos, the rivers but beds of pebbles or the waters become poison all through our abuse. Will we turn to our God who declared us master of the earth, crying for him to save us? A quick question we must ask ourselves and I will conclude with a selection from the book that Jacob mentioned. Chalciuichotl, flor de piedra verde, flower of jade. Un sacerdote desterrado se dirige a cuacuclicue. Ave madre, cabeza de serpiente. Madre, faldas de serpiente. Los estambres se han formado en pájaros volantes cagando flores. El amate se ha machacado. Las tintas se han untado para formar pájaros despojados. Visto solo en sueños. Las flores y cantos se han tejido. Nos han creído la tinta roja, la tinta negra. Madre, collar de manos y corazones. Somos planetas. Conversamos con nuestros corazones. Somos dueños de un corazón, de un rostro. Pero entre nosotros son grandes las distancias. Una vez hubo grandes árboles y las aguas les hablaban fuertemente al gabilán escuchando. La crueldad conocía el color de la sangre. Madre, cinturón de culebra, ebilla de calavera. Los mares han sido violados y las aves marinas engrenecidas reclaman a la luna violada. Madre, manos serpiente. Madre, pies de águila. Tu hijo te ha traicionado. Y los tres es cielos que cargas acuestas los ha envenenado. La obsidiana con que nos cortábamos las manos labrando instrumentos de sacrificio está abandonado. Ya no es sagrado el dolor. Y por lo que pagamos con esta sangre ya no es la vida. En exiles priestes adreces cuadleque. Cuadleque was the Nawa mother goddess. And it literally translates as she of the serpent's skirt. Some of you may be familiar with the magnificent cuadleque statue at the anthropology museum in Mexico. And I think you may have seen reproductions of it. Ave serpent headed mother, serpent skirted mother. The yarns have been shaped to flying birds, the shit flowers. The amate paper pounded and the paint spread to form mating birds seen only in dreams. The flowers and song have been woven. The red and the black inks have not been believed. Mother colored in hearts and hands. We are planets. We converse with our hearts. We are masters of a faith and a heart. But the distance is a great among us. Ones there were great trees and the water spoke loudly to the listening hawks. Cruelty knew the heat and color of blood. Snake belted, skull buckled mother. The seas are defiled and the blackened seabirds cried to the defiled moon. Serpent handed, eagle footed mother. Your son has betrayed you and the 13 heavens you carry on your back have been poisoned. The obsidian we cut our hands on shaping tools of sacrifice is abandoned. Pain is no longer sacred and what we pay for with our blood is no longer life and that's what we find ourselves today. The earth is violated to such an extent that you may no longer be able to sustain human life. Our country faces fascism. Honestly speaking we've been fascist for a good while now but now we have removed all masks and we confront the loss of a democracy. More often than not merely a myth that must be created step by step. We have not very little time left to cure all you. Most of us have been isolated by a plague. We cover our beautiful faces so that I can't see you there but your but your eyes. As I behoove this to immediately make our revolution and it cannot wait we must make it now and there's a revolution of the heart and of the consciousness because there's only one thing that's going to save us. I don't say our souls because I know very little about that but our sweet asses and that is that we must learn immediately to love because nothing nothing nothing will save us except to love life to love each other and to love the earth our mother who verses sustains us and who will ultimately receive us in the end and we have no choice we have to make that revolution and then he treats you brothers and sisters then the spheres of your power of your families your community your churches you speak out and make that revolution of love. Thank you. Thank you so much let's keep it going for Raphael. You know I came in today and I was very tired and stressed and my worldview was very small and I'm so appreciative of poetry and all of the readers here because what poetry does what it has the possibility to do is to blow apart the constriction of our worldview and open us to what is which is everything so thank you all of you for reading and uh yeah Susanna Susanna Braver Perez author of Hurricanes Love Affairs and Other Disasters is a push cart nominated poet and a winner of the San Francisco Foundation Nomadic Press Literary Prize for Poetry 2021. Susanna has studied creative writing at Naropa Institute summer poetics program program UC Berkeley's poetry for the people at countless workshops including Las Dos Brujas and Berkeley City College from which she holds a certificate in creative writing and poetry. Susanna's poems have appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies and this is her first full-length book of poetry which was published by Nomadic Press in June of 2021. Let's give a warm welcome to Susanna Braver Perez. Thank you JK and thank you to Nomadic Press and the Nomadic Press family and everyone who's come out. This is a really inspiring and as JK said very necessary moment in our history to be together and think about nature in all of its forms. I'm going to you know it's interesting how poets we kind of coalesce on certain themes and so this sort of picks up a little bit on Raphael's last theme to the goddess mother and it's called braiding feathers and sweet grass. The rosemary in my garden is talking. It recalls beginning as a small twig I snapped and stuck in the ground. Now evergreen and periwinkle spread wide across a wooden fence. The plants have stories to tell if we would just listen. Autumn brings quints and remembrance of my grandmother's hands dancing with a paring knife. Summer's jasmine and rose echo my mother's scent. Remind me what it feels like to be loved so deeply. I enter a blessed land where a woman wears an angel's face. She is rain. She is breath. She is nectar. Her showers turn fields from brown to green. When I drown in doubt she braids my stray strands as of sweet grass into medicine. She listens. Knows strength comes from the telling. What can I offer in return? Her gifts are like air like earth beneath my feet. What can I offer the earth? I string beads of gratitude on sinew. Fly high on wings. She plumps with pink feathers. And as I touch the clouds she becomes the sky. Thank you. Water's edge. Seafoam hair. Curled kelp goatee. His thigh beneath my head warm as sunlight silhouetting laurel and pine. The bay is a dance of waves. Could hum me to sleep in a nest of now. A hawk swoops down, flies away, ground squirrel in its talons. Lifts into surly in sky. A sliver of moon suspended in blue. Thin veil of mist kissing our cheeks. We watch impassively. No hawk's stealth, but the sun also shines and we share stardust as if time had dissolved in the sea. Thank you. Thank you. This next poem is also dealing with time. This is time as construct, garden as time. I've crumpled my calendar. Days unfolding into themselves without demarcation. Like a world without borders that divide rivers down the middle. As if a country could own the water, could own the wind. My wild garden keeps time for me. Yesterday the first friches appeared like a quiet explosion or a magician's act. And I knew it was February. I placed a few fragile stems in a jar breathed in the perfume of persistence. In a world swaying like a rope bridge the sand steadies my feet. It's still winter but we haven't seen rain for months. Orange nasturtiums are curling. Lavender blooms turning gray. But the exhalists don't care. Their bright yellow faces drinking sunlight as they spread green arms across the lawn. As if any kind of calendar was nothing more than a puffball in the air. Thank you. And continuing with the biblical themes that Raphael also brought to us this is a poem that I wrote after Lucille Clifton's poem Adam thinking, Eve thinking, and I wrote this as a woman-centric retelling of the Garden of Eden. It's called It Was Good. One, I want earth in my hands. Clay, wood, bone to carve, shape, she, like water, and soil in my palms. I want to make her whole and round a fertile sphere in which I can shelter. Two, I want his hands on my earth to feel mountains and caves I have created. Let him think he created me. Let him marvel at his creation. Let him circle me in his sun-baked skin, sweet scent of apples in the air. Thank you. But as we know, nature is not all flowers and beauty. We also know that nature is hurricanes and fierceness and destruction. And my book, Hurricanes, Love Affairs and Other Disasters, speaks a lot about hurricanes. I am very obsessed with Hurricane Maria and its aftermath. And five years as we approach the fifth anniversary of the hurricane, when you're on the island, you still feel the physical remnants of the hurricane, as well as the emotional. It is an island suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder due to Hurricane Maria. And this is titled, to that subject, her given name. Before the rain sliced like knives, she arrived like a thoughtless guest too early before the yucca was boiled and the tables set. She shouted her name from the street up through the second floor windows, voice like soot, streaking silk drakes. The virtue of her namesake revered and hallowed havens disguised her jagged nails and snake-filled hair. She rumbled in, slung her muddy boots and bloat on sofas, poured herself into bedrooms, blotched scrapbooks with water and mold, bent narratives, became backdrop for family photos, became a measure of time. Before and after. Antes, he this voice. After the rain sliced like machetes, she flew away, tin roof tied like wings to her scapula. She huffed her salty breath, left her name etched on walls and trees like an explosion of graffiti. Now, when a lamppost tilts towards the sea, we whisper her name. When the washer overflows and throws back those flooded days, we whisper her name. When semaphores refuse to blink in cars jostle at street corners, we whisper her name. When the lights flicker and die again and again and again, we whisper her name. Inscribed on four thousand gravestones, her name is a mourner's rosary, a nightmare from which we can't wake. Yet, at daybreak, she sips café in our kitchens, scratches at our skin to see what we're made of. We don't know her by lonya or senora, just her naked given name. Well, while we're in Puerto Rico, and since Yvonne is here, thank you for coming, I'm going to read a poem about my relationship with Puerto Rico and Oakland, and it is called, Letter written on a cloudy morning with a cup of yacono in my hand and Ray Barreto playing on the radio. My legs stretch wide like a ballerina de jeté. I have finally put in place the bifurcated life we imagined, un sueño de pájaros prena. My left foot lands among California poppies, Lavender Xalis, named a weed though I find joy in their yellow petal faces and lemon flavored stems. Our rescued feral sleeks through tall grass, her calico coat still woven with wild. Inside the Oakland bungalow we bought when freshly wed, in the neighborhood was flecked with crack houses. There's steady light, a soft bed, a fridge filled with yogurt, tomatoes, and greens. My right foot steps among fallen fruit and leaves of a mango tree, icon of your youth, then stomps giant roaches that run for cover, scatter in the Caribbean light. There's ajo, cilantro, y saboya in the kitchen. I have finally leaped, querido, into the vision we shared but that I shredded into serious clouds from cumulus billows overhead. I am sorry, querido. Your wild wings always frightened me but you were never made for a cold northern cage. I offer my amends with my own sort of wild, a house spot sight unseen in Borinquen, amada Tierra Santa, where your ashes have surely settled by now. Fears fly off like seagulls, sea breeze slap my face awake. I pinch my arms and thighs, my legs stretch and glide across the globe, glistening like the polished wooden dance floor in California, where two seeds dreaming in the wind. We first met. Thank you. Thank you. This next poem is written about one of my neighbors in San Juan. We need more people like her. This is called Sana, Sana, Colita de Rana. Donia, Rafaela sings a capello to cookies, grows Bromelia's little frog nests neath her cocotero trees. Donia, Rafaela knows mañana must be colored green. When hurricanes whip erupt of winds, she shelters precious plants and seeds. Donia, Rafaela feels the heart of every stone she sees, a steward of Borinquen, a healer like the honeybees. Thank you. Thank you. And I'm going to close with what amounts to a prayer for the earth and a prayer for us as its inhabitants and a prayer most importantly for our children and grandchildren, may it be. This gift of waking is the same, but gathering twigs and cooking by flame impacts the earth more softly than our modern morning rites. Symphonic swell of birdsong paints a crisper air than highway hum. Dear Adam, dear molecule, remind me we are still made of stardust as fire ash fills our lungs and green scented mornings or sacrifice to avarice and ease. How, sweet son, do I share the secrets of centuries when monarch migrations teeter on extinction in our lifetime? How do I light candles, praise forward-flowing ties generation to generation as if guaranteed? I thrill to see the timeless glow of love in your young eyes. Delight as you taste the sweetness of heirloom figs, see wonders strung like rosaries. I want to become an ocean, buoy the future, seaweed swirling like a bomba skirt around my waist, plankton glistening on my skin. I pray to quell rising seas that swallow islands. I pray that grass sprouts on scorched hills. I pray for the monarch, the rhino, sea turtle, lemur. I pray for the earth's healing so that you, querido hijo, may know the vastness of the sky's blue and the fullness of the river's length. Thank you. Let's give another round of applause to Susanna, if I have her. Our last reader for the afternoon is Gustavo Barajonan Lopez. There's this beautiful book here. Again, all of these books will be here at the end so definitely come up, flip through them, have the talk to the authors. If you've enjoyed the work that you've heard, let them know. It's always great to hear. Gustavo Barajonan Lopez is a writer and educator from Richmond, California. In his writing, Barajonan Lopez draws from his experience growing up as the son of Mexican immigrants. His micro chat book, Where Will the Children Play, was part of the Ghost City Press 2020 summer series. He was a finalist for the 2021 Quarterly West Poetry Prize. A member of the writer's grotto and avona alum, Barajonan Lopez's work can be found or is forthcoming in Iron Horse Literary Review, Porto del Sol, The Ascentos Review, Apogee Journal, Haydn's Fairy Review, among other publications. Let's give a warm welcome to Gustavo. Yeah, thank you. It's an absolute honor to be amongst my wonderful fellow poets and also in this building and it's been a dream to be reading here. So, my book's title is Lost Another River Set Devour that talks a lot about my dad's passing away but also other forms of losses and one of those is the future, right? The loss of, like Rafa had mentioned, like how all the destruction that has happened, all the poisoning of the earth has led to, like, it being unsustainable to for us to maintain our lives within the earth. So, I talk about dystopia a little bit more just as a warning but so go ahead and begin. So, Callio, The Sunken Village. I walk into a ghost village. Water half lives in buildings that once recorded the transitory. You see, for all its movement, even a man-made lake holds onto eternity, like it is a coin begging to be flipped. I stare in emerald waves, swaddle piles of stones, that one perhaps once made a wall, perhaps a home. Now a rearticulated sand. At what point does a lake cease to be artificial? When is a purely body? The permanent recalls a launch into itself. Cerulean cloud chasens me. I make out five petals surrounding a golden halo. I bite my tongue. Atonement made tangible. My blood outgrows. My body becomes water. It spatters on green rock, disappears. How do I taste, I wonder, why so many gods chose to make us out of clay? Mud to be breathed into being. After all, even stones have a half-life. Into the snowstorm. You leave no room for my thoughts to wander. I admire that you announce yourself everywhere with a piss. So many nights howling at unhearing moons. We hear soft crackles as the river ruptures its own frozen surface. My ski mask collects my breast moisture as my lips go numb. As you walk in front of me, your tail blends into the falling snow. Only the leash prevents you from vanishing into everlasting white. There are memories of violence held within us. We can never tell each other about our bruises, or at least not in a way that we can listen. But I read into the way you flinch. I notice your trembles at the scuff of my boot. The yellowing of your joints caused by chronic caging. There is a comfort in seeing your own tracks in the snow. There is a comfort in breaking ice underfoot and not falling through. Built to mourn. Sometimes I convinced myself I was built to mourn, programmed by mitochondrial DNA, or perhaps conditioned by scarcity. I mourn the past, the chances not taken, the healing postponed, parental sacrifices to unmeritocratic gods, subjugation of my ancestors by my ancestors, my blood strangles itself, my dead and yours. I mourn the present inability to stay in this moment. Here the children murdered. Here the nationless can populate their own planet. We'll take in bookstores, artesania shops, news as mythmaking with no protagonist. Systems are the only demigods. Emperor penguins collapse into our inequity. I mourn the future, humanity as self-destructive, sinking cities commodified, filtered tears. My life as fiction, the earth wants to forget, but scabs persist. Mis hijos, mis hijos, mis hijos, forgive me for what I drowned. And then a couple of dystopian poems for you. So a letter to future self. Dearest me, do you still live? Is sunlight still a thing? Is your cannibalism radioactive or still capitalist? Are your body and your city submerged underwater? Crabs eat gourmet epidermis? Is your society post-racial? Just kidding, I know it's not post-racial. Have you learned to sit your mind still? Do you still forget your dreams like dimes into a wishing well? Does your body let you self-care? How broken is too broken? Are you still broken? Are we? I offer you my mistakes like handcuffs. Best forget yours truly. Thank you. The skeleton goes to the supermarket. On a day like any other, the skeleton decides to go to the supermarket. He stows away his reusable bag and his ribs to save another small piece of a faraway tree. At the store, he sees aisles full of cans, tomatoes and peaches and all sorts of legumes. Every can is well past its expiration date. The skeleton takes a can of vegetable broth and goes in search of fish. As he looks over the selection, the skeleton imagines what the cartilage would look like, clothed in flesh and scales. After choosing the fish with the emptiest eye sockets, the skeleton walks slowly to pay for his groceries. The skeleton smiles at a bony cashier as he takes the charred $20 bill out of a duct tape wallet. The bill turns to dust when it touches the cashier's hands. The cashier doesn't bat an eye. Chevron Czech guzzle. Hydrocarbon cloud fires itself into a new existence, a type of life brought about by its own destruction. All my early life, I grew up in the shadow of smokestacks, smog misting thirsty earth. The running juices of lemons and tomatoes made a worthy life. My father applied his callus hands to cultivate our backyard. Proudly served bowls of sliced peaches, his love language, his life was cut short. He, like my uncles, like myself, is a statistic. Elevated cancer and asthma rates the reward for taking life, giving breath, how much death is ingested in the name of survival. Like crude oil, the years continued to leak from my shortened life. One day, my mother boiled chayotes. She'd grown. I devoured their spiny hearts, an incantation to rid me of the poison threatening my life. Today, I tender the corrosion nesting in my lungs. I cash a $300 check from the latest Chevron settlement and consider the value of this life. So, trying to end on a slightly more hopeful tone. So, weathering. Torrential rain silences the unmaking of desert dunes. Cactus throats swells and I call it love. Love that clash of clouds, that smell of slipping touch. Love takes refuge on the snake's follow tongue. Sand over fills its own wanting. Love carries the body's minerals in its vanishing light. The waiting, too, is love. The drought and the flood, the thirst and the drowning. Let me be ground water enough to quench the unseen. Let us lick the purple from the fallen sky. And then, thank you. And then you all saw my children earlier. So, it's still, what's it called? Even with everything that's happening, just seeing them gives me a hope that would have been indescribable for before becoming a parent. And so, this is a poem about one time when I was doing a Zoom meditation. And then, trying to be present with the meditation, but my son was not letting me. So, this is my last poem. Quarantine meditation after Rona Luu. Close your eyes. Feel the sensation. Your clothes against your body. I close my eyes and gift my nerve endings all of my attention. Feel the sensation of the air touching your skin. My child envelopes toddler hand around my pinky. I visualize a white light, or visualize a white light, follow it through the forest. My child pulls me away, saying, come, come, cross the river. You see your ancestor on the shoreline. I glance at my face on Zoom, see my past in my features. Your ancestor gives you a gift, an object, a hug, a few words. My father gifts me his eyes. I stare into our hazel irises. Return to the forest. Listen to the leaves. What do you see? My child climbs on me and stands upright on my thigh. My arms ready themselves to catch, but my child does not waver. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thank you to John and the San Francisco Public Library for having us. John, I'll tell you we have another event coming up in August. And many thanks. Let's give one more round of applause to Gustavo, Susanna, Tarita, and Rafael. And we'll be here for a few more minutes, and I'm going to hand it back to John. Thanks again for the wonderful reading. Thank you also audience members. Please come back on August 14th. You can grab a flyer on your way out if you want to remind yourselves and your friends. We also have a poetry here regularly, so check our calendar. We have a monthly reading the second Thursday of each month. One more round of applause for Nomadic Press, and have a wonderful Sunday. Thank you.