 Welcome everyone to our Thursday Night Poem Jam. We appreciate you being here. All right. And tonight is a very special edition of Poem Jam in connection with our One City One Book Campaign. And so it's sure to be a powerful night of reading and we thank you all for being here tonight. And if you have not heard, I can't imagine if you have not heard, but I hope you have heard and will be in the house March 16th when we celebrate Chanel Miller and her book, Know My Name. And Chanel is an artist and an author and a survivor. And her story is the Stanford campus rape and her subsequent trial and judicial system and her whole or deal with that. She went viral on her victim statement that she read went viral on Buzzfeed, and then she wrote the book. So please it's not going to be recorded one time one time only. So come check it out. All right, whoops, I didn't mean to do that. Let me try that again. What did I do? Okay. Welcome to the unceded land of the Lonnie right raw mutish tribal groups and families. We want to acknowledge the many raw mutish alone tribal groups as the rightful stewards in the lands in which we live and work here in the Bay area. And we are committed as the library committed to upholding and uplifting the names of these communities. We acknowledge that the library is not a neutral institution and that we stand in solidarity with the black lives matter movement, and ending our own systemic racism, and working on our own racial equity within our own house the library, but also throughout our community. And we do all this by providing factual useful information. There are lots of reading lists and lots of events. So I will later on put start putting some links in the chat box about all of the great stuff we're doing at the library, and all of the stuff about this campaign, including a link we are partnering with SF war, which is SF women against rape. We know these are very powerful and triggering topics. We know that the adult is very, you know, one in three women are assaulted sexually so it's triggering for a lot of people so we will put links into SF war who are on the phone right now if you need them. And also be putting my email address if you need anything from me I can help you find resources. And next month's poem jam will also be a one city one book inspired poem, poem reading so please come check out all of these amazing women on the topic of sexual assault and sexual violence against women. So very powerful. The amazing thing with one city one book is we get to have a lot of events around that, and we're going to be hosting the gorilla girls March 24. And I'm really proud of this series and again, I was just telling the poets that the programs that we surround our topics of one city become almost more powerful than the actual event. So every Monday, March and April we're hosting a series called know your name, including some amazing women and some amazing people doing amazing work on the topic of sexual assault and survivors and healing so we'll be featuring. No, the rape documentary a legendary film to a lot of folks will be doing a panel on international transgender day visibility, our transgender community is high on the statistics of sexual violence. We're doing some art and some poetry and some healing, and more focus on healing and less on, you know, the sexual assault side of it so please come spend Mondays with us. All the way through April. So many amazing events that we're super excited about one that I am totally think is going to be amazing and powerful is our partnership with SF war sharp which is a department underneath the human rights department. We're training for first responders and how to appropriately deal with sexual assault victims, and they're going to do a panel on our unhoused community and the sexual violence that they face. All of these people are partners for this one city one book so it really is a huge campaign something that you might not know as a, as just a member of the public is that we get to bring Chanel Miller to our schools. So we'll be having a one on one talk with the students of mission high and Balboa high school and this will be student led and I'm just, you know, constantly blown away by our youth and I gives me hope. So there's a feminist club at Balboa high school go Balboa high school feminist club, and then youth outreach workers which is missions high does a school to work pipeline. I'm not even going to talk on the school to prison pipeline mission high school is working to get our children to work and in amazing places and do amazing things such as mental health care and the health field and in libraries and so I'm really proud of those things that we get to do with this campaign. All right, and I think that is about it as far as my announcements and just you know because this is a safe space and these are tough topics we just want to make sure that you all know we do have a patron code of conduct that we can go fall back on. We have a tech host here and myself will be monitoring the chat. All those feel good things that we go through take space make space. What you learn here goes out names and privacy stays here. All right. And with that, I'm going to stop sharing. And I'm going to read, I'm going to be the first reader. Oh, my God. So I'm just going to switch up a little here so I can see what's going on. All right, so my poem is called us attaining things we thought we would the photos from when we sailed high on the sunship. I smile consisting of snowflakes and sunshine. Our shadow that links has disappeared. What without him, are we lost souls that once claimed the other as their prize, mending the broken gashes of living the ascension of you as I descend hard like sweet bitter love, belted out by the queen. This is followed by its partner tears. When gravity's pulley brings me to your lap. Thinking with my lips rationality is not logical. When love becomes the valid argument. Our snapshot reminiscence rolled tight in their cylinder coffin awaiting escapism. All right, I'm turning it over to the magnificent Kim shock everybody. Thank you so much for the magnificent I can manage today. Thank you all for coming to this. Many of whom could have easily been readers tonight as well. And I know that, and I've been talking about this a lot. In the last couple of days, the, the topic of violence and sexualized violence against women leaves no one out. I could have booked pretty much any woman poet I know, and they have experiences and material and all of those things, and I know that. And then much the same way that whenever I do an anthology I know that choices have been made that I've made them, and that there are a lot of other ways to go nothing like this is ever complete. And I just, I appreciate you all for being here, whether you're reading or not reading what I need you to understand about the group of women who are reading tonight is that collectively this. See, it was, I asked everybody for how long they've been putting both this month and next month. And our collective poetry experience is more than the amount of time that any of the local colleges have been active. These are experts, and collectively, we are deeply expert in poetry, and in our own experiences women and being in women's body. Some of the material is rough. And that is absolutely like, and everybody understands that that it's up to them like how much they can give in the moment so sometimes you think you can. So I just really want to appreciate everybody who's here and everybody who's reading, even more than I usually do which is a whole lot library. There are as many stories of dysfunction and violence that there are individual people. And I feel like it needs to be acknowledged that are our upbringings are often a grooming process to make this accessible. And I just really want to put out there that break, even in your own head for your own body break with that grooming, it takes an act of will. And I really just can't say enough about how in awe of all of who I am. Margoni. Rather than giving people individual accomplishments, I just want to say, there's a handful of laureates and former laureates here in the room. There are people with very impressive degrees from very impressive places. There are people who have been working in the poem line for a very long time and to do it better than anybody else. And just as a group. Jackie Rogoni has a book, a new book, which I hope she'll fold out the waves of people. And if you would please welcome Jackie. Thank you, Kim. Thank you for gathering us all together on this important topic. I also want to thank Anissa and John in the San Francisco but library for having the courage to spotlight this topic. I also want to support the partners who sponsored this reading and made it possible, as well as SF war for being here as I know this will be triggering for a lot of people and I encourage you to take that support that's in the chat, and I may find myself calling to I especially want to thank my fellow poets who are here who have the courage to put beautiful words to ugly things and to share them here. I thank you for sending me this amazing book. I had heard about it but I had never read it. And I think what's true is that so many of our details are different, but so many of our themes are the same, and there's so much truth and so much that I resonated with so I thought I would pair a couple of passages from the book that resonated and connected with some of the things that I wrote so the first thing that I wanted to read words from Chanel Miller riches for my first home. She says, whenever I hear a survivor say they wish they'd had the courage to come forward. I instinctively shake my head. What about your courage fear of retaliation is real. Security is not free. It bothered me that cover coming forward should feel like heading toward a guillotine. I don't think that most survivors want to live in hiding. We do, because silence means safety openness means retaliation, which means it's not the telling of the stories that we fear. It's what people will do when we tell our stories. Tonight I'll be reading from my book seven skirts seven skirts is inspired by incidents of upskirting which is a form of void voyeurism. And it is not illegal in many states as of the publication of my book that's coming out next month. The first poem I'd like to read is called. I decide not to stay quiet. But what about the kids. Family shame is a knot black hole in every nearby thread into its tangle. My lips snip just close enough to release us all. The next poem is from a sear a longer poem called seven skirts. And after an incident of upskirting, I was not able to wear a skirt for a very long time. And so this poem is an act of reclaiming skirts for myself. And it goes through a series of seven skirts that I wore throughout my life and this is the I won't read the whole whole poem but this is the first poem. First part of the poem one camel suede backslit knee length. I stand at a stove in my a line and heels back when he still spun me to solve so trumpets, and I still made him Pesto gnocchi back when he did angry and I'd say sorry sorry back when he hugged hello from behind and I couldn't see him hit record. Back when I was his wife, before I was just one of 200 up skirt videos on his hidden hard drive dressed in my suede effort. And the next poem I'd like to read is called. Actually I'd like to read a passage from Chanel's book. Why did this one strike me and it. So many things just made sense when I read this. She says my DA would later tell me women aren't preferred on juries of rape cases because they're likely to resist empathizing with the victim. And insisting, there must be something wrong with her because that would never happen to me. And this poem was written after a restraining order was denied. The judge was female and both of the attorneys were also female. This poem is an erasure poem and it was, it's written by blacking out lines of restraining order. denial. It is called request for restraining order denied an erasure. I have personal knowledge of all. Hereafter, hereafter, hereafter, I am living with 100% physical custody of my history. And this next poem is called shared physical custody. It would be so easy now to be demeanor. I am building my children over to that sex offender. Every other weekend, Thursday evenings and Father's Day. I could dry up acres with my saltwater, but then I'd be the one with a solstice heart and ex-husband Hades, he'd be off with the kids riding bikes in the dark while I withered. I'm not going to suffer that way. Not while I can winter the toy on berries to a juicy red. Love manzanita flowers out of my still warm cut. Even though I have been Persephone, grateful for every parsimonious gift, savoring each needed seed. I wasn't counting. And the next poem is called. I took my daughter to the women's march and had a blast. I said pussy, until it was funny. Pussy pussy pussy pussy. Oh, I'd been angry. All right. So good and furious. I spat instead of spoke until the right side of my brain buzzed on the regular with migraine. James said, get angry. But that weekend, I was having too much fun. On the plane, knitted ears poked up all the way from 29 F to one a. We nodded pink hellos to Metro strangers, not strangers, wished each other have fun. We smiled for selfies with our Congresswoman few should ear to toe. Nobody got angry. Breasts to back hip to hip among hundreds of thousands. My daughter feigned boredom. The way a 13 year old, whatever's her way for a while through an overwhelming world, unable to escape being squished onto a page of her granddaughter's history book. If one person had shoved or God forbid fired. We've all been trampled. I was that close to responsibility for my own child stuff. Whatever. She needed to find a bathroom. We excuse me excuse me through that enormous ball of yarn. Nobody got angry. Nobody groped or grabbed at our delight. Not for that weekend. Anyway. Two krill swing together in the multitudes feeling safe. No matter how looming the chasm of a killer whale. Pussy pussy pussy pussy pussy. I just have two more poems. And this one is called even my orchids. Announce me to a sage and feng shuied my new home until I stopped obsessing about locking the door. Friends brought housewarming orchids that purpled the place with optimism. Before going dormant. Three years nothing. I had a glass of a bloom. Though I kept watering. Only those wide green tongues. And they didn't budge. Mouths frozen a gate in the last words they uttered like nobody listening. Why bother. They've been whispering all along in their furtive vernacular from pot to vase across the room. Not now to risky. Wait and see. It is the speckled. My gentle one. That says enough. Braves blooming. And suddenly. All five orchids are sending out stocks. One after the other. I keep it coming keep it coming syncopated fireworks exploding flowers. Held in. Long enough. And before I read my final poem. I don't really love this quote. Chanel Miller which is nobody. She wants to be defined. By the worst thing that's ever happened to them. This is called new sewing project. You stitch a morning along the deckled edge of a mountain range. Cut with pinking shears. You heap your scraps. Doug from a bargain bin. Wind your bobbin. Start in without a pattern. For your chiffon dawn. You see sequence where there had been lies. Not one more day. Could you tailor that wife costume and nude lipstick. Of someone else's fantasy. So you get to work. Blind needles and machines. Stitch by stitch. You fashion a day you imagine will fit. Until it lasts. You slip into the sky of your making. Trim the last hanging threads. Twirl around in the mirror. Thank you. Wow. So many lines in that. I hope people get your book. Because that's a lot. Okay. Is somebody who I heard a lot about before we ever met. And I'm delighted that we did. And I'm just going to let you. Let you do things. You've been working on a lot of great work lately. I don't think one of those things is a book, but I could be completely wrong. I've got to apologize to everybody. I recently had my second COVID shot. And I've got the brain fog. In a real way. So. If I mess up. Anyway, we. I'm mute. And. Let's do this thing. All right. All right. Wow. Well. Firstly, I just. Really just so grateful. So grateful to be here. I'm just such great humility. To be here. You know, it's a, it's a. It's women's history month. And wow, what a great, what a great honor it is. What a great honor. What a great blessing it is to be here. With all of you. And also with our Bay Area communities. I'm really humbled to be zooming in from. Which is the Lashan. A lonely name for this territory for Oakland. From the East Bay, California. And really it's just, you know, I just really want to say, you know, Kim, what a great, what a great honor. What a great blessing it is to, to have met you and to have worked with you. And to know your work. I just wanted to, to let, let our community know. How much it went out for Pacific Islander communities. We had an event that the San Francisco public library. Organized and also supported. Was so much hard. Right. A community that's so invisible, like Pacific Islanders. And when we had so many of our young people. Were attempting suicide and we came to Kim. We said, Kim, can you help us? You're a poet, you're an indigenous poet. That we deeply respect. And our children are in crisis. And Kim said, let's give you the space. Let's give you the opportunity. Let's give you the opportunity to tell the stories. Kim really so much is such great humility. Thank you again. And thank you so much for this invitation. You know, Anisa, I also want to say thank you so much for your work. I am sitting here trying to, trying to keep a, you know, a steady face because I knew I was coming on soon. So I am really excited that when I finally get off that I could just really listen. And as everybody who knows me well knows, I'm going to be crying a lot. And you know, Jackie, I was listening to your work. And when I hear your work, Jackie, I just wanted to say. My life. It's actually what I would say to you as well. You know, Kim, Kim, and also to you, Anisa, and to all the warriors on this panel tonight. My life. My life. My life. My life. My life. Thank you for the great love. Thank you. We would say, we would translate that as Tongans into our Indigenous police system. Thank you so much, beloved warriors, beloved sisters, for doing your ancestral calling. So I just wanted to start up with a poem. It was written a couple of years ago, but it's important for me that still has so much meaning because it's really about the work that I do and the research that I do. And then this book that I'm manuscript that I'm trying to finish, it's actually about the Tongan Mormon family. So for us Tongans, Pacific Islander, we have one of the highest conversion rates into the Mormon Church in the 20th and 21st century. And in the work that I do, I talk about what that means to be a Tongan daughter in a Tongan Mormon family. And so this first poem is called LA Stories. It's called LA Story. It was published a couple of years ago, but nonetheless a story that's still relevant. The bright lights of the city surround her like flies. She mumbles a prayer learned in Sunday school and holds on tightly to the cold air. Hope funnels through her fingers like their daughter, her parents couldn't keep. Two weeks ago, she fled her home in Utah, fleeing the grasp of the Mormon Church. And her parents, Shane, freshly pickled like the apricots church leaders taught her to preserve every autumn. A skill that promised to make her into a good wife. Tonight on the corner of Sepulveda Boulevard, bright lights expose the blue bruises on her body. Disguising her as an older woman. She is her mother, her grandmother, lingering in dark corners, abandoning guests and the tedium of polite conversations. 3am, 3am, she telephones her mother, pleading for her life, for a cusp of warmth to quell the cold. She imagines that their shared silences, histories of bruised abdomen and crushed collar bones at the hands of men were reasons enough to reconnect them, bury the aching distance and reunite them. But the silence on the other end hangs and festers like a wound. She is reminded that in her family, there are only sons. And then the next poem, the next poem is called short story of the sacred. What happens to the spirits of our Tongan ancestors? Our Tongan sacred? Once they are cast as criminal and forgotten, what happens to the spirits of our ancestors after we have severed vah and cast them away from our homes? Excuse me. Erase them from the flesh bodies of salt water that archive our memories. Do the spirits sleep meekly and keep their mouths shut like good Christians for the duration of centuries? Do they live inside the prison walls of our Tongan amnesia and the simplicity of our silence? Or do the spirits of the dead, our Tongan ancestors, our Tongan sacred grow weary of loneliness? Do they become angered? Please forgive me, guys. I'm having a little bit of web problems here. Here we go. Water is growing into acres, aching without end. Floods of mourning created by the hands of European and U.S. greed and militarization, courting the native as if we were ever consensual lovers. Oh, the seduction of surrender. Falling on their knees in prayers to knee white male gods, they act like missiles of friendly Tongan faces, missionaries, academics, and businessmen that recite the alphabet of white progress on the decapitated bodies of Tongan women. There is a taste that lingers aroused, a flesh of memory that the colonizers are unable to mine, although they have tried and tried and tried. It keeps refuge for centuries inside the salted corridors of my copious Tongan women's thighs. Rainwater, vimele, sweet water, the black sand caves of Oholay are moist with the young leaves of sea, mohokoi, ripe fika fruit, saplings of kape, talo, ufi, and manioke. Enough to feed generations. Kabirut and galoa offered to the female god, fellahune, our mother, circles of octopus body, generous like ceremony. Circling the heartbeat of our Moana Nui, Tracing Wah, genealogies from Hawaii to the shores of Seguritay, the Ohlone sacred site, the occupied land now known as Malayho, California. Yes, yes, let me reach inside the darkness, but only night, vayi, dafu, dafu, water trickling, crooning without end. Touch the heartbeat of Tonganess, our sacred, the beginning that leads me to tell you the ending of the story. The spirits of our Tongan ancestors, our Tongan sacred, the Old Ones, names of those of us that were criminalized, raped, killed, and forgotten, the names of Tongan women warriors, they and we. We steal the Mormon missionaries, matches and kerosene, and burn down these motherfucking prison walls. And so the last poem that I wanted to end with, I wanted to really say, thank you so much, Kim Shuck. Thank you so much for your guidance. Thank you also just for your encouragement and for your mentorship. And this last poem is, is for the West Berkeley Shalemount. The West Berkeley Shalemount, as many of you also know here in the Bay Area, is currently under, is currently being occupied. It is right now there are, it's actually surrounded by barbed wire fence. By barbed wire fences. And there are signs that say, do not enter. The West Berkeley Shalemount is America's 11th most endangered historic place that was recently given to, named by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. And it's also one of the most, it's one of the oldest Ohlone sacred sites here in the Bay Area. So the poem is called from the West Berkeley Shalemount to Moana Nui. Moana Nui is Oceania. It's the Pacific. Or to translate into English, Moana Nui is people of the ocean. The Pacific Ocean, which is the largest body of water here in our earth. Story number one, the desecration. The desecration of the sacred water. Violence against her native woman body persisted upon his arrival. He brought out all the instruments of progress, baptized and renamed her Berkeley. Her body submerged under him. He is heavy and unrelenting as empire. Her plated black hair, he wrangled into platitudes, he drew descent strands to silence. He is the weight of asphalt, a lonely parking lot. His ownership of her, he terms as freedom. Story number two, the Tongan Mormon Baptism Ceremony. I am an eight-year-old girl at my Mormon Baptism Ceremony in a chapel, in a small chapel in the middle of the town. My hair plated and split into a division so inconsolable, my mother tenderly tied the wounds with bright white ribbons to mark this moment. That the missionaries termed as the coming of the light. Under a leaning red fruit tree outside the Mormon Chapel, hungry dogs mate in the early of the piety inside. His priesthood authority intrusive, like the bleach baptismal water, surrounds me. My black hair contorted in their nets, severing the cycles of memories until I am no longer able to discern my breath from drowning. He renames me. He renames me. Declaring the moana on behalf of his gods, bounded my feet with ropes made from woven human hair, lined with spears of well-boned tide with knotted foul, baptized and converted me into a carcass of an obedient daughter and wife. This moment, he proudly records in his missionary diary as light. And then story number three in the poem, it's called hashtag, we're still here. The West Berkeley shell mound. Her native woman body rests under asphalt. Luminous mana silenced by a parking lot. Man-made and mundane. She is their private property owned by a white settler family who refused to negotiate with Indians. Oh, I'm the battlegrounds who chin and we are under the hands of missionaries and mercenaries. Our children's bones hung from trees like decomposed fake fake a fruit. The flagrant sour taste in our tongues. Yes, when we thought I was lost. When we thought I was lost. The sacred was there. She picked up our memories ancestors left for dead. She fed our mouths with the flesh of sweet acorn and saltwater from her breasts. Until we grew strong. Fearless. She weaves the circuitess dance of death and birth into her long black hair. Dream times exchanged through collective breaths from our one and newly to who chin. She coughs origin stories birthed before his arrival. Innumerable constellations. They grow in our alters like the flowing yellow poor garlands in our hair. She is survivor. Creation. Creator. Always here. Yes. We remember the stories of us. After the missionaries and the mercenary. Are gone. Thank you so much again, beloved warriors. I just before just just just leaving. I wanted to just just to let you know about the recent campaign. If you can you have some time. Please take your wonderful selves or your families in your pot. Right. And you're doing this social distance. Please go down to the West Berkeley. Share your prayers. If they're in little forms of beautiful poetry or personal memorabilia. Please share your prayers to help to protect the sacred. So thank you so much. And so much love to all of you and your families. Thank you. As always amazing. Our next poet. Is again, and I could say this, and I will say this for everyone of these people. Really formidable poet. The Connie and I are connected. In more ways than that. She's been an incredibly powerful friend. No matter what energy level she had. In moments. When I wouldn't have asked. That's been amazing. Bernie post. Thank you, Kim. I'm so grateful for you also our connection is really important to me. I feel the same way. I just wanted to thank Kim. And San Francisco public library for supporting this really important program. I think that. Especially now in the pandemic, people who have survived. Sexual assault have particular kind of either loneliness that might remind them of other loneliness. And so I think this is so important for all of us to be part of it. And so I'm very grateful to be joining you a fierce and amazing poets. Very grateful. Thank you. I'm going to start with a poem is from my book, prime meridian. And I'm showing the book because this is, because mostly about sexual assault and childhood. And don't mind saying because of a nature of this program that my offender was my father, which has a lot of particulars that make it difficult, but I will start however, with a poem in the book that I wrote to kind of encompass all of the things in the negative, negative, negative, negative, negative, negative, negative. I don't know if it's whether it's child sexual abuse, adult sexual abuse, women, whatever it is. And so this poem is to have my all encompassing poem. It's entitled to all of us who it was my brother. It was my uncle. I was alone. Someone was next in the next room. It was my father. I was young. I was in third grade. I was wearing something in my drink. I was wearing winter clothes. I wasn't wearing any clothes. I was on my way to work. I was on my way home. I was afraid of him. He told me he would fire me. He told me he would kill me. He told me to shut up or he'd take the kids. He told me I was a whore. He told me I teased him. He told me I would ruin the family. He told me no one would believe me. He said nothing and stared right through me until I was dead. I didn't tell for years. I told and was not believed. I have never told. I have bad dreams. I avoid parties. I avoid dark rooms. I avoid long lurking glances. I avoid skirts or winter or summer or seasons where my skin remembers violation. I drink. I don't eat. I keep it quiet. I tell my friends. I take pills. I don't walk alone at night. I hold my lover's hand. I worry too much about my kids. I need to tell the truth. So I hope that kind of helps us encompass all. There's something that happens in the nighttime. Thank you. There's a way of shedding the night that's so traumatic because of the post-traumatic stress that often comes with it. And so this one is accessory after the fact. I destroy the evidence upon waking. Wash the blood from bad dreams. I make sure there is no subconscious splatter on the curtains or floor. The blankets are pulled from the bed washed over and over. I cover the mattress with a loose sheet. I hide the evidence, the shards of night. I hope nobody notices how I left my body fled the crime scene. I burned the dreams with one lit match the ashes of a single nocturne falling out of your mouth. I think it's really hard to be a survivor of sexual assault with all the trauma that's in your body. And walk around like a normal person and people always ask you kind of what's wrong, but of course you don't really feel like going into it. It's really hard kind of thing to carry that and then kind of be a normal society. This one is about my father. Sunday in September. I saw you exiting the grocery store today. It's been over 20 years since we've spoken. But I still see you now and again. I think this time you recognized me first. But this time I was the one who made you look away. I was the one who I used to call father. At the other end of the parking lot, six police cars barricade the entrance, arresting some guy who stole a basket of groceries. The siren lights unmistakably quiet and measured. I watched you get into your car. A slightly hunched over old man holding two half filled bags of groceries. A Korean war veteran. Rapist of children. The police are now driving away and an old silver Buick. The police reading Miranda rights to someone else while I watch you drive away. My father finally passed, but it was very daunting for me to live in the same town as him, but yet I wasn't making, having him make me leave. I'm okay on time. This other one is about, you know, there's a relationship with the offender, especially if they're very close to you and then the family. So I'm glad that I got this thing to kind of survive to have breakfast with your rapist in the morning. But this one was about, my dad went to the lake a lot to fish and he would get drunk and come home. And so this one is called forgotten war. And many of you may know the forgotten war was also the other name for the Korean war. Forgotten war. You stumbled around the house through most of the 1970s, sometimes muttering things about young Korean girls. I didn't understand. I was in the middle of a dark water and wouldn't return until there was no breath left in that lake. I asked mom about it once. I knew you had been in a war, but didn't understand it had anything to do with your off center gate, the rage you held in your right shoulder, the passing out at seven PM on the couch. One day I went to get a popsicle in the garage refrigerator and you were standing there. One hand is always on the Pat's blue ribbon. I asked, did you ever kill anyone in the war? You went silent, looked away, but I knew already. I knew it in the way you laid the hooked fish on the counter, the way you cut one long line down each body, severing their forgiven skins, taking the eyes out, saying they were a delicacy in other countries. You seen in me how I relieved I was, they could not see you anymore. I knew the lake would someday disavow the fish as I have you, but at times when I drive past a murky lake, I still see a stumbling over the soul soaked fields of our Korean, our forgotten war. And soul is spelled S-E-O-U-L. You create these relationships because we're associative beings with things that happened while you were being abused. They're these things that you kind of displace the trauma onto. So I have a lot of poems about the experience of my father fishing. So this one's called deboning a fish. I wonder what the fish saw in my father before he gutted them. Were they relieved to know they'd soon be out of misery, relieved to stop the gasping for air, to cease the futile flailing around the countertop? Did they wait within themselves and pray for the long knife? Did they remember the lake? It's muddy bottom knowing they can never return. You can tell me and I already know that fish don't understand these kinds of things, but neither does a small child. At some point, don't we all beg for mercy? I think I have a couple more minutes. So taking this innocuous object of the hoop hoop, and I wrote a poem about that. As I said, these things that we think of these objects and how they're related to the trauma. And sometimes for me, I can't even have salmon because of all the fish stuff. They all know. We're making salmon. If you want to leave, mom, just leave. Hula hoop trends 50. In 1967, there were a few things I wanted more than my own cylindrical smooth plastic neon pink hoop. Like a story, I climbed inside the sphere again and again when my waist was still straight and bony. Countless times I dropped it to the back patio and the scratches around the rim always appeared after the first few days of summer. I never understood the chup chup noise and what places of the earth were inside of it, but it must have been the deepest black. I believed it had something to do with the reason my father walked towards me so often, watching intently the movement of my hips, teaching my body to understand the irrevocable forces of gravity. Each week I learned better how to navigate my own talents. I already knew I was a sinner, as mother told me at night, for not saying my prayers. But I knew better than she what was more important. I practiced all the time. I was bonded to the idea of retrieval. How the hoop would drop below my knees, spiral downwards, how desperately I needed to predict descent. The summer's past, the patio covering crumbled in unpredictable patterns. Eventually I started practicing in the side yard, but he found me anyway. I forgot how to pray, but each day I would rehearse the understanding better each time the undulations of a broken dance, the sound of the death rattle. I'll close with a poem. For me, this poem is about getting distance from the trauma, but then not getting distance from it. But how you kind of view things years later. And when I escaped, when I was 18 and never went back, I moved down to Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. And that place whenever I go there is like a refuge for me of kind of feeling escaped from what happened. So this one is Coastal College Town. I leave the hotel room early looking for a small cafe. My husband's still in bed, the sheets half off. I merge onto the same freeway of 30 years ago, the same one who took me away from home. I am wondering again if I got everything from the garage, the sheets from the closet, the letters you stole from me, pictures of myself in grade school. I knew I would never return. He knew it too. The fog breaks and I find a place where the locals go on my way out, throw a dollar in the tip jar. On the way back to the hotel, I find a hidden easement between the small cottage beaches. I find a few narrow steps each slightly covered with sand, each a geology of fine gravel and salient sorrow. I think I did get everything. I think mostly about the sorcery of the word whore, your voice low and moist in the back of my ear. I think I got everything from the garage, the sheets from the closet, the sheets from the kitchen, the sheets from the kitchen, the sheets from the kitchen, the sheets from the kitchen, how every day, decades later, I am thankful for small easements, how the fog suddenly lifts itself from an old road. Thank you. Thank you so much. I'm looking forward to hearing Elaine. Thank you. I'll mute myself. Thank you so much. I feel like we should have known each other before we actually met. But, well, I'm just going to ask her to please unmute herself. And share words. Thank you so much for being here. Prepare to be done. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I just want to say thank you to all physicists so healing for me and amazing. My staunch. Response has always been like water. I don't bite my tongue and I don't hold that shit. So though it may be triggering for some. But. We have to normalize conversations on this. I'm a firm believer. And so I talk like. It's normal to talk about it without shame. So I'm going to read an insert from my book. A cried out laughing which will hopefully, you know, soon, we'll see what happens. The dates of changing and things, but. And just the background story of it. This is when I guess I, I. Officially came became poetry spoken. I don't know. But I confronted my uncle when I was 12 years old and I don't call him uncle. I call him Charles. Yes, I do put a name to it and I don't fucking care. So. We were at my grandmother's house and, you know, he always tried to corner me and growing up. I just thought that that was the thing to do because he was doing the picnics and all, you know, the classics. So. I'll start. Bear with me, y'all. I too got my shot the other day and I'm like fever and chills right now, but I'm going to get through this. I was a fast learner, but when exposed to adult situations and issues, it can be a blessing or a curse. Alcohol was always around me all the time. My parents were heavy drinkers. I would go around taking a sip of Jimmy Walker red with Coca Cola and wrangle beer. I should be telling you how I became an alcoholic, but I witnessed firsthand what it could do to your body. One time I did get a little tipsy, but new enough to drink tomato juice. What 10 year old do you know that knows how to improvise when there's no tomato juice to go out in the garden and eat a tomato? I mean, Google wasn't out then. Not at other stuff. I just didn't mess with because Miss Barbara and my mom were forever talking about someone who died from an overdose. Hell, if it wasn't drugs, alcohol, a violence of some kind. It was sexual abuse. Now, families are made up of predators. And I'm not saying all, but there's a significant number of family members or close friends who prey on children. When you come from a large family made up of mostly men and you are the baby girl on both sides, they teach you how to fight and to stand up for yourself as though the enemy is outside. Families are not prepared to deal with uncles, especially the ones they look up to. So I had to take matters into my own hands because I was taught not to be a victim. So who I am 12 years old confronting Charles, like an adult, I don't know where the words came from. It's not language that you could hear from a child, but I just knew I could no longer take the abuse. Now this may be triggering for some, but it also may give you the strength to stand up and not be afraid. We were in the hallway of grandma's house. When I approached him and I said, everyone looks up to you. You are always doing picnics and getting family together for special occasions, giving me hush money as though that nullifies you touching me. You have destroyed my life to the point where I could barely function in relationships. You will go home and act as if everything's okay. See when I was younger, I didn't know. I actually thought this was love and that this is what you are supposed to do. But today I look you straight in your eyes. I know this is the last time you will ever put your hands on me. I don't care who believes me or not. It is time that you wake up in a cold sweat and as I yell for all to hear me to tell you to keep your fucking hands to yourself. There's no greater threat than the one I'm throwing down today. I will kill you if you ever lay a hand on me because I feel like I'm going to lose. Today I let my mom and brothers know who you are if they didn't already. My uncle began well needs I'm so I shouted back stop and spare me the bullshit apology and excuses. I only wish others will stand up for their daughters and their daughters to come. I felt good to take back my power. I wrote those exact words in the journal that I was keeping and would refer to it whenever I needed to. I wrote a couple of poems. Out of that. 2016 was the worst year ever. If anyone sees my son give that young man a hug and a kiss be it virtual because the ugliness of sexual abuse reared its head with Charles. 2016 my mother had gone back to back east to be with her siblings after battling cancer. She waited until she was cured and went back east. Within months all of her siblings died and my mother is now the matriarch of the family. And laying the woman that I'm named after she went into the hospital and my son was there with her grandson to wait to let her older son know that she had to go to the hospital. So he heard a noise went downstairs and it was that motherfucker. My son went to jail. My son almost went to jail which meant I almost went to jail. As a result I had to leave because I was going to jail and so I wrote this poem called Lord Hear My Christ as a result of the trauma that ensued. I'm going to tell you how hard it was to live through so much turmoil. Soiled in family secrets and lies and no matter how hard you try to break the cycle you become a part of the family ties. I can't function in relationships because they always end up in goodbyes and Lord I just want to release these tears and the unions and picnics found me isolated and alone. Yeah I just write for the picking, I have no clue what it meant to be truly loved. Now I'm just afraid of affection, hugs, I met with rejection so to my closest family and friends it's nothing personal it's just perception. But here comes my blessing. See when my son was born I was torn because I didn't know where to begin until I and he taught me how to smile and I laughed, especially when I saw the dimples in his chin, woke up those feelings of innocence. So I guess you could say that I was reborn again, not much for religion, but our spirits share a connection. And though I am a child of God, you must remember that I am still human. So for my son, I will shortly die. You see, anger and revenge is a powerful tool so far that I need you to protect me from myself or in hell. I will shortly lift up my eyes, hold your head up high, real, because you matter to me. You know, my family, you know, as other families, they tend to sweep things under the rug, act like nothing happened. And I don't know where I guess the gene wilted or whatever have you, I am not that way. So when things happen, I'm like, no, we got to talk about this. We have to address this right now because I got to get this out. I got too much shit to deal with other than. But it took me a long time to learn why my mother and my sister were the way that they are. And I didn't come to that realization until recently of how I needed to be different for them. So this is called the bond separated by four years. So by the time I was born, she was already hooked to the elements of family. So she protected me. See, she knew patterns, she knew truth, she knew how to lie, she knew pain, she knew how to fight, she knew hate, she knew how to love. She knew how to love, well, at least me. She knew what it meant when mama said what happens in this house. She knew who not to take candy from. And when we were alone, she knew to take me with her. She knew she was the mirror of mama's mistakes, her escape, a world where she could feel safe in, where her magic lets her shape outcomes and secrets. We share a language that only sisters can understand. I exist in these two worlds because she fought for me to have a voice. See, when I was young, I didn't know the meaning of sacrifice or how for words, you're just like mom meant a life sentence. And if I am to change the scope of their vulnerabilities, then I must wear these women like a badge of honor. Thank you. So I'm gonna do this last piece. Sort of, you know, my anthem kind of, I think it collects all and encompasses all women who have gone through whatever trauma or violence. And so this piece is simply called My Sermon on Amount. To date, I think it's safe to say that millions of women have died by the hands of their husbands, boyfriends and even their children. Their crimes, a culture of oppression. You see, violence is a condition, not a religion, but if you need a 12 step, let me take you on this road to benediction, you see. He without sin, let him cast the first stones, but I guess you'd be that exception. Well, who needs your seeds when Mary's given birth to Christ through immaculate conception? And if it wasn't for Eve, would there even be a resurrection? You see, the curse is not that she deceived, it's that we are treated less than. So it's only right that when he rose, he chose to show himself first to a woman. Did not new heaven save Moses to deliver you on to the promised land? Did not Deborah come to judge with honor and respect shed in light on God's master plan? And if it wasn't for him to tell me, where would Joseph stand? And in order for Islam to survive, did not Khadijah stand on that front line? What about that Abba rebellion before women, by women in 1929? You see, the paper gave a low number and said that 50 women die. Well, multiply that by infinity. And well, welcome to my reality. You see, violence against women is violence against women is violence against women. There are no technicalities, no mercy and honor killings harder behind your religion just to get your fixing from Apache to the Zulu nations. Now I'm not drawing bloodlines because this sisterhood be my congregation. So I think it's about time that we break bread and partake in this communion. Sip the wine and toast his to our reunion as the mothers of earth. And rarely do we put each other first, so sisters. I say the time is now. So as I walk upon this mountain, my knees bent head down. I'm saying, father, why must I die by the hands of the ones that I bore life? Cause I, I just don't understand. And if this is my fake master, please send me a new master plan. He said, baby girl, wipe your feet cause on holy ground you will stand and your message is what I command. So from a moment you entered that birth canal, you would nurture with love, honor and respect and protected by women. Because before man, you were child back when we were treated as equal and seen in his likeness and image as one. So no matter your color law, God, God is a prophet. You are still my sons. Keep your fucking hands to yourselves. Compliments. Thank you all. Thank you. All. Oh, thank you. It just occurred to me that I decided to put myself after a lean. Just saying. We're going to call that pilot error. Thank you. This is. All right, you. Motivating. Woo. Moving. OK. So for those who don't know, run Kim. So I thought about this show a lot. And I thought about reading some stuff from this book, Murdered Missing, which is about murdering and missing indigenous women. Because it's all part of the same conversation. And then I thought about reading something else. And I'm going to read the something else. And then I'm going to end with a very new thing. This piece is called Preserves. And it's a little long, particularly for me. This morning, the hill I live on is tucked into under dark smoke. California is burning. The street cat I feed has been sick on the porch. And when I walk outside to have a moment with him, he looks at me with half-lidded, sticky-looking eyes. It's probably not going to be my favorite day ever. And I am capable of being pretty damn cranky, often with the side of snarky tongue. There's a tape of our current national spectacle playing over and over on various radio stations. Losers, a spate of commentary, then. Losers. Mariamni's body was kept in honey for seven years, as the story goes. I picture honey beating on her skin, what it does to hair. Whenever I have honey, I make a mess. I find sticky bits in my elbow hours later. Out of love, they say, he kept her body in honey to preserve it. Melified corpse. Or corpses of some honey. He was supposedly used as a warm cure, though. Honey meat has been used for the same thing in this year to get. I doubt Herod's body was creating medicine, nor do I believe that he was acting out of love. I think he was keeping a relic. Love, they say, in honey, like figs or apricots or some other fruit. Some people need to preserve memories. Some people need to keep pieces. Something about the time spent indoors, the poisonous snarl of the air, my own unpleasant mood, has me reviewing my relationship with the world. I was taught to be pleasant, and I'm not known for being pleasant, but the family did try. I move too loudly. You walk like a truck driver. This never makes sense to me. Truck drivers not known for their walk, but OK. Not ladylike, I suppose. The walk on my heels. I dig them in with each step. Something. I also talk too much or not enough or about the wrong thing. And I accept that wholeheartedly. I also now make a living with my words and have a small collection of rewards for talking about the wrong thing. I will take my next message with me. Thank you. What does the name Mata Hari pull out of your imagination? It's not expired, comes to tell mother wrongly convicted, executed, or sensuous. Seems to be popular or occurring words. She had much sex, reports assure us. She had much sex. Her trial testimony assures us she was an erotic dancer, sexist. Then they convicted her of being a double agent and shot her over. No, she became a hosting ball that she makes regular visits into all kinds of art. She has admirers, even now she has admirers. Some things that it's one of these admirers who stole her mummified head. Yeah, mummified head. After they shot her, they cut her head off and put it in the Paris Museum. Her head's gone now, so we took it. Where does one keep a mummified human head? Conversation piece in the living room, maybe? Box in the bedroom, maybe? Office of the sliding panel controlled by a button in the desk drawer, like a creepy Thomas town. Does the new owner look at it and condemn wild women? Or peek at it to self-seize in times of stress? They touched the notorious red hair with a stinger at their ability to force a connection with someone's name. The air smells reminding me of my dark room experience. I was taking a photography class at a local museum and I was the only student. I was eight. Two hours of hunting interesting photo targets followed by an hour in a dark room with a 50-something man. On my first day, he asked me where I was ticklish. I told him I wasn't. The next day, he tried to prove me wrong, digging hard fingers into my knees. Other places. Confession. I am ticklish. Additional confession. I am a mutinous cut, and I have been for some years. Final confession. I decided not to react. I stared at him with my best bailful glare, which is actually pretty good. He stopped trying to tickle me and made me scrub every inch of that dark room. I am now photo-reluctant. I don't like taking pictures. I don't like having pictures taken as me. I think these things are related. They might not be. The whole experience was clearly inappropriate. The question is, how inappropriate was it? If I've been more welcoming when I have been less sensitive, it could have easily been arranged by my attitude and that could have triggered him to molest me. But neither thing happened. My glare. My magical shield plus three glare is mighty. My partner is a photographer, by the way. We don't have a home garden. When I found out that Julia Pastrano was going to get a dignified burial, I sent out prayers and burned trimmings. Pastrano has hypertrophy, because it's an intangible hypotragic, which are the sorts of congenital conditions that have inspired crowds of all eras to provide appointments for her. Her uncle sold this to the Stoker. She spent the rest of her life performing under a number of offensive stage names, where she sang and danced in front of the audience. He had a son who looked just like this. When the two of them died, they were preserved, stuffed, and toured around the world until the 1970s, when she was displayed in Sweden because people found more of that kind of gesture. She then moved to a sale coffin in Oslo in 2013. The governor of Sunilala had to sit home and say, human dignity is the thing measured out in portions determined by someone else's authority. The odds of good that most of the people here are afforded whatever dignity they are allowed because of someone else or some law, rather than a global belief in inborn rights, in particular, if you find yourself other in what calls itself the first world, ground of unusual appearance, poor, odds are that you do not have an absolute right to your body and people will do whatever they want with it if they think that they will get away with it. Maybe, yeah, that's the way things are going. So that's my courage back. I'm told, I said, be careful of what you teach me. You told me that years later. Be careful what you teach me. I am going to outlist you because even then I knew what the limit was to this game. The game. I will keep hurting you until you cry. That's important. Knowing full well it would stop at that time. I told him you can take blood and I'll give you a stick, but I'm not going to. And I didn't. For 25 years. If you've never had a loving female relative scream, are you trying to get laid and laugh at them when you don't know how crazy you're laughing at them? In high school, the guys who said, maybe we just won't let you go home and I looked at them to what had already become the left side that was the right side. Then laugh in their faces. Be careful what you teach me. A few years later, at a bar in London ordering something completely inappropriate and waiting for a friend. The guy at the end of the bar looked at me and said, you're a killer. And I smiled at me. But you be careful. It is possible to live through things you don't deserve. One morning, giving birth to my final son. In labor, an argument that the doctor who was there on the spot, I started crying. And laughing at the same time. And I'm pretty sure that's why I was absolutely crazy. But that's a gift my friend gave me. And I'm not done talking. Thank you all so much for being here, for being powerful. If I had to die on a hill, it would be the one that I'd want to cry back. Thank you so much. I hope everybody gets the help that they need to come to the place that they need to be at. Please thank all of our readers. Manisa, who needs to make herself visible again for a moment and get applause. Jackie. Hello. Queen. Connie. Elaine. Thank you, John, for always being very, very displeased in all of these endeavors. Thank you all of the audience for being here. I saw nothing disrespectful in this chat. And I am grateful. And we're gonna do another one of these next month with a different sort of support. This is the hard work that needs to be done. Please, if you can, unmute yourself and share a round of applause. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Thank you to everybody. Wow, very powerful. Man, just have a look at the library. Kim. Yeah, beautiful. Thank you. Thank you for the courage. It took a lot of guts to do what you did this evening and I applaud your courage. Thank you. I'll chat. Amen to that. I just put in the chat box, the link to next month's home jam with another group of amazing readers. As well as all those other chats and resources and my email, if you need to get a hold of me for anything, pitch me a program. I can help you. Let me help you. I miss you. Help you with resources, books. And John, thank you for being back up tonight. Appreciate it. And thank you all for being here and being so brave. Thank you, everybody. It meant a lot to me to be here with all of you. Thank you. Beautiful. It's so nice to see you. Good to see you again. I'll text you soon. Okay. Bye. Good night, everyone. I'm deeply grateful to you. Thank you. I'll hear you. Lots of love. Thank you, Kim. Thank you, Anisa. Thank you, beautiful, beautiful warrior poets. Stay safe, everybody. Let's leave it on that one.