 And I'm going to go ahead and open the meeting room up, John, you can hit record. Hi friends. Welcome YouTube viewers. We appreciate you being here tonight with us. We'll get started momentarily. Hello everyone. Welcome everyone. Welcome welcome. All right, let's jump in. First off, we want to thank you all for being here tonight and we want to, I want to thank our poets for taking part in this one city, one book campaign. I know it's not an easy topic and I know it's could be heavy for us and I know it could be triggering for all of our friends out in the audience and in YouTube land and for us as, as participants. So I do want to let you all know that SF war. That's SF women against rape is on call tonight. And throughout this campaign, they do know that we're having programs and are extra staffed up. So if you need any assistance, please do, do reach out to them and I will put all sorts of info in the chat box after I'm done doing the talking and turn it over. And we want to just one more shout out for them and there's the, the graphic if you want to write their number down, but I will put it in chat and they have been amazing partners throughout this campaign. So we want to welcome you to the unseeded land of the Eloni tribal people and acknowledge the many raw mutish Eloni tribal groups and families as the rightful stewards of the lands on which we reside and work here in the Bay Area. Our library is committed to uplifting the names of these families and these community members with whom we live together. We encourage you to learn more about first person rights, and we have lots of programs and lots of reading lists because we love making reading lists, and I'll share those with you momentarily. And we just want to read a quick, a quick statement from our racial equity about the recent violence against AAPI communities, and we condemn this attacks against our communities. And we stand in solidarity with our Asian communities, neighbors and colleagues distressed and hurt by these attacks. We also acknowledge that these events are complicated by the entanglement of anti-black and anti-Asian stereotypes and reporting of these acts of violence. We believe everyone has a stake in dismantling white supremacy, and both anti-black and anti-Asian racism both uphold white supremacy. We at the library work very hard and have been working very hard on our racial equity commitments and work, and so I encourage you to check that out as well, and I'll put a link in the chat box. Thank you very much. For the upcoming events, we are still celebrating one city, one book. And for those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, it is our yearly, well, sort of yearly, largest literary campaign. This year we've chosen Chanel Miller for her book, Know My Name, which is the story of her sexual assault on the Stanford campus and the judicial system, the media, and all that she went through to survive and become this amazing author and this amazing artist and how she is still an amazing activist and advocate for sexual violence awareness and for survivors. So we get to, with our one city, one book campaigns, we get to book amazing folks and amazing poets and amazing artists and all aligned with the topics of the book. So next Monday, you do not want to miss Aisha Shahida Simmons and her revolutionary documentary, Know the Rape Documentary, and she will be in Convo and Q&A following the event. It is going to be a little bit of a long night, so come get your dinner, bring your dinner and join us, and she is outstanding. The next Monday we have artist Ali Bloom, so we're going to come do some art. Every Monday through March and April, we did a Know Your Name workshops, healing survivors, healing poetry, art, writing, all kinds of amazing stuff, and we're going to conclude that series with graphic novelist, Tyler Cohen. Some other events coming up, the amazing one and only notorious Dr. Carol Queen, who will be talking about healthy sexual relationships and a virtual healing circle with the amazing Mayor Memoirs folk who are just outstanding and compassionate and powerful advocates. So come to the healing circle if you need to be at the healing circle. We don't do any of this alone for sure, by no means. Our friends of the San Francisco Public Library sponsor all of these amazing events, and I would like to pay you all like 5,000 each. I would love to. A couple more zeros, so we appreciate your time and your energy in being here, poets. Kim, you are invaluable to us. We will never let you go. And to all of our partners who worked on this campaign, we want to thank them. And just one more shout out for SF war, and I will put this in the chat box after we get going. And then without further ado, all of these amazing poets that joined us tonight. Kim Shuck, I am going to turn it over to you. Natasha dinner steam Molly Fisk, Kelly Grace Thomas, Kelly and Parker, and Mona web. I appreciate you all for being here. Kim. Thank you. This particular. This particular event was difficult to. Well, not because there aren't fabulous people. Who are perfect to speak at such a thing. Who have worked at this for years. Who have had this as a topic for a very long time. But because there are too many fabulous poets. Who have the qualifications to be part of this. I have to say. I have to say that. Between the people who have written about this before. And the people who've never spoken about this. The fact is, is that I don't know. A poet. Who doesn't have. Material on this subject. I said this at the last event. For the rest of time. The people who have written about this or. The poets. And that is really upsetting. And part of it is that the system that we went in. Is essentially. Perhaps people. For. Not reporting. Things that happen to them. The system guards people. search around this, I just got angry and angry and angrier, which is, I guess, part of the problem too, because I should probably think about it a little more often. We have the enormous pleasure this evening, maybe pleasure's the long word. A lot of this, a lot of tonight is going to be, you know, a swift kick. So just put your seatbelt on. Probably one of these women was very carefully chosen. Part of the problem is how cultures that are in charge see women, women of different origins, women of different cultures. And during the last event, Avace said that she had a good poem to read, and I thought, there is never a bad time to involve Avace in a poetry movie. So we're going to start out with Avace. Thank you so much for being here, lady. For those who don't know Epic Organizer of Poetry, phenomenal poet and musician, I could go on. I will not go through the press, we should go through it. Welcome Avace. I am so honored to be here tonight and to be able to do this poem. It's from my book. And by the way, it's called Screening Silence, or Every Teacher's Greatest Nightmare. Little Liliana sat in the back of the class, such a pretty girl, smart as she was pretty and as distant as the planet Mars. She'd never look into my eyes and I never knew quite what to say. I mean, what do you say when all you can see is what remained in the pain and the years drowned by tears and the secrecy, the secret, her secret? Frankie. He was just a little boy, an almost perfect little boy, strangely beautiful, quiet and shy. He wore a silence so loud at screen, Frankie never seemed to laugh or play and even though he never let me get too close, he'd sort of always sneak up on me and rub his face up against my arm, then run away when I tried to touch his shoulder and hide behind his terrible secret, that secret, and it hurt. It hurt because I never knew what to say, what to do, what do you do, how do you take the pain away from a silence so loud you could hear the hidden tears, how do you expose the unspoken, the unspeakable, invisible, ever-present hidden monsters, stolen innocents hidden. In the shadows of too many dirty secrets, stolen childhood, hidden, behind the pain of too much undeserved shame, sometimes their helplessness hurts so much, so much burns like a red hot branding iron and I want to scream for them, cry for them, fight for them and publicly undress all those monsters who seem to have nothing better to do than to put out the lights in our children's eyes and turn what should be beautiful lies into lifetimes and nightmares. Time to teach sometimes can be a frightening thing when all you can feel is all the feeling these children have learned to this own. A terror so strong you can feel the buried fear, hidden behind the blank deadness of their eyes, eyes that have forgotten how to cry, eyes the child who seemed way too much, then felt up too much and touched on so much they finally shut down and turned off at the thought of any kind of touch and learned how not to feel anything at all and it hurts. Well, it hurts, it hurts. It hurts so bad because I still don't know what to say, what to do. How do you take the pain away from a silence so loud you can hear the hidden tears? How do we expose the unspoken, the unspeakable and pull off their invisibility? They're pretty mass, the pretty mass that cover whatever we don't want to see. Why can we call these hidden monsters by their names and stop playing games? It's time to free up old little boys and girls before they get forever lost in the cesspool, before they've been completely destroyed, it's time we tear down the walls and let these children know they're not alone that what happened was not their fault. I say what happened was not their fault. The only crime was a beauty so powerful that the evil and the beast could not sleep till the beauty was reduced to a horrible level of filth and ugliness. A feeling as ugly and cold as the hole that once housed a molested soul. I say it's time. It's time for this emotional prison to fall and expose this insanity for just what it is. A sickness that's older than dirt or madness that causes nothing but hurt and throw some very, very, very serious light on the world's most violent and most damaging and most well hidden secret. Thanks for listening to my words. Thank you so much for participating in the auction. Our next poet. Well, there you are. Kelly Grace Thomas is somebody who's worked out for a while. We know that she has material on this. She was asked to present some things to sent me, which were spectacular. Please welcome. Hi, good evening, everyone. Thank you so much, Kim, for organizing this really important event. Thank you to the San Francisco Public Library for this important campaign. What an amazing city in terms of combating violence against women. And thank you to the other readers. So I have a few poems for you tonight from my book. It's called Vote Burned by Yes, Yes. And I'm going to start with When the War Comes. You are blackout drunk at a party. He affects you on a mattress without sheets. You run from hands, wish for arms. When the war comes, you lose your wine in a bottle of names. When the war comes, you're only 16. You have not learned the word combat. The word the war is here inside this room. And you think that love is locking the door. You empty yourself of mouth, crawl from him a smudge of body. When the war comes, you are unarmed in the soupi dark. There is blood on the mattress in this room. Pass through the hands of many generals. They never speak of bodies. They only blame the war. Thanks. Um, this next poem is called Naked. He takes me in tiny bites of bedroom. He is always there. Feeds until I grow sick. My stomach ripened. He doesn't need a face or a name. I give back the garden of blood. Bone, the book that named me. He licks his lips as he watches. I don't believe in sin or the many men. Liberty is sick of being someone's woman. Every night I take apart my breasts, clean my weapons, cross them. I sleep alone, take my body, but leave me words grieved through grammar lust, hollow enough to fit inside a pretty mouth. I spelled my name with this war, carried this body, targeted and tender. Woman, wear your blood on the outside. So my whole, my whole book deals with violence against women, both by men and also violence against women, against themselves, against women who continue to perpetuate the violence against men. I think that so many times there's a lot of different parts of the conversation. And when I started this book, you know, I thought about all the things that had happened to me that had given a message about who I was and who I thought I was and what I was apologizing for and how I wanted to leave that behind. This is called burn the boats because I believed somehow it was my fault. I never told anyone how great grandmother used to pinch the extra chub around my waist and ask, who will keep you now? Pointed to every empty man not at our table told me I'm only as good as what I can please hunger my only harbor. I carry this, a body full of broken boards and boundaries. Never told anyone how my first love dropped threats like an anchor warned me what would happen if I took on water, sinking, always slipped between his speech. I believed being boarded equal to boat. So I floated for seven years, subtracting what I had for another body. The parts of me that couldn't fit inside his hands. My first love never let me use the front door. Instead, gave me a dark portal to climb through. I only remember this in bed. He used to measure the circumference of my thighs and then ask for less. I became the smallest vessel I could steer every day. He climbed through my story until I gathered enough distance to choose another name I can't turn back. I strike a single match, burn myself brighter. The boats that built me smoke on shore. All right, and I just have two more poems for you all tonight. This next one is called and the women said and thinking a lot about, you know, the collective conversation, the collective voices, the collective cries for help that seem to, you know, not always be heard in many more ways than one. And this is called and the women said, watch as men call us lottery tickets. Watch as they cash register us into gamble into into played out combinations of sweaty bills and pocket one. Watch as they lick their lips for a better life. Watch as they pout when we don't pay out when the bling of our breasts don't make them Cheshire cat the same. When we got our own debts that have to be paid to mirrors to mothers to the way our hearts traffic light in the closet after we sold ourselves whole. And the women said, feel the way we became campfire. How we go storied into this dangerous beauty. How those men can't scrub out our smoke, our blue. Learn to burn slow. Stand still like the moment between begging. And maybe feel the way that we soil into shovel. How we let ourselves be held even after a matchbox tongue misspoke our flames, even after we told Flint, you don't live here anymore. And the women said. Feel how we are not open fields waiting for their strike. They cannot bury us deep. Call us things of war and be surprised when we land mine. And thank you again so much for having me in for this amazing night. I can't wait to hear everyone's work. This is the last poem. I think whenever, you know, I'm talking about this, I want to always lift up women, their beauty, their strength, their resilience. So this is called Boat Body. There is not enough distance between us and the body. I beg the women, build an ocean, turn on tongue and territory. Bargain, fire, tease, flames into family, taunt each island into telling these stories, still birthed in our bellies. A sensory apologizes for someone else's hands. I cradle my grandmother, ghosted into guilt. Can't forgive this landscape. I will not kneel for a man's affection. Women keep this world bloom dizzy. Teach these teeth to tender. We are swollen with tomorrow. It's time to holy one another. Instead, saltwater saints crowned and seafoam the blue of each majesty. They cannot sink us if we name ourselves sea. Thank you so much. Thanks for listening. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Tell me a part of a similar poetry about people. I'm about to go. I think you're actually after me. Please welcome... Hello everybody. So I'm gonna talk a little bit about what the book meant to me. And I'm also just gonna talk about a couple things that really drive my work. So people that are familiar with my work know that I talk mostly about trauma and dissociation. And there are a lot of things that we don't talk about in terms of what it means to survive violence, whether it's sexual violence or generalized violence. And a lot of it obviously comes from my own personal experience. According to the World Health Organization, 25% of the global population experiences addiction and mental illness. And the number one cause of these problems is trauma. So just let that sink in. I'm not telling anybody in this room something that they don't know. But the reality is we don't talk about it. That we could have something terrible happen to us and yet we keep the secrets for the perpetrators because we've been shamed and blamed into silence, which is exactly what I'm not going to do. So survivors often deal with dissociation, which I'll talk about in a moment. Auditory, visual and somatic flashbacks, insomnia, anxiety and panic attacks, sled shaming and shaming in general, suicidal ideation, lack of trust, fear of intimacy and these things can be lifelong. And we could spend thousands of dollars and thousands and thousands of dollars in therapy. Dissociation is a disconnection from our emotions and body. The reptilian brain of fight or flight, when you can't flee, your mind will do it mercifully for you. And that is what dissociation is. So for those of us who walk around sometimes glassy eyed and disconnected from our feelings, I see a sister. Survivors also have an increased risk of being victimized more than one time because we've been well trained to be comfortable with being uncomfortable. So I ask everyone, tell your story, take away the power of shame and blame and take your power back. And one of the things that we can do collectively is catch and stop people from victim blaming, interrupt it, be an upstander and let's stop that from happening. A couple of things that came up in the book, she mentions this calm exterior that she's always kept for herself and these little fish of anxiety that keep jumping and breaking through the surface. And that really resonated with me, those bursts of uncontrolled panic and anxiety. I thought she did it beautifully. The other thing that she said, which I thought was really important, is that she said, I am not Brock Turner's victim, I'm not his anything. And so in that vein, I'm gonna read my first piece, trigger warning of all the pieces. I'm gonna read this one, maybe the most triggering. So if you need to, please step away. This is called the day I stop feeling. I'm suffocating under the weight of male hatred. And you want something from me that does not belong to you. Something you don't even really want, but just to consume, to destroy, to annihilate. And on that day, the day that I stopped feeling, the sun still shone brightly as if it didn't know. And I never saw it coming. To be taken to the lake by a stranger and wonder, is this the end? The end of my life or just my living? You see, there's this brief moment in time between the belief that everything's gonna be okay. And then the horrifying moment when you realize that your greatest fear is just about to come true. And then I'm left alone with the one who will annihilate. Well, the other is paid with a bottle of alcohol, as if that's the fucking going rate for a person's humanity. And for me, it was my worth traded for drunkenness. And I'm trying to hold onto myself like, how is this happening and my head smacking up against the window? But I, I'm not really there. You see, it was not the first, but it was the worst. It was the day that I stopped feeling for many, many years. I sat back and I watched as the last fragile part of myself gets slammed to the ground and shatter into a million unfixable shards. And part of me celebrated for you can only be reduced to shards, but once. And then slowly it loses its grip of power and becomes a nuisance. I remember a time early on where I spent days just smoking cigarettes, just trying to pass the vast emptiness created by your contact with me long after the blood washed away and the bruises faded. And here I sit now, one of an army of robots created by your belief that anything about you matters. It does not. You are worthless and unnecessary, but yet the fucking rule values your opinion over mine. And as I choose to leave this life as a robot and as a zombie, I must take back what's mine. And that's the unreachable part of me that you never touched and say that you are not here. You were never here. And then my next piece, my next piece is about the effects of dissociation and how it affects my life on a daily basis. And for many survivors of assault, most people know about PTSD, which is the complex PTSD. They're the most common forms of dissociative disorders as is DID as well. And this is called instructions to insulate from moonlight. Wear malachite, drink Hawthorne berries, prepare for the next cycle in the infinite loop, and remember to breathe as the sun starts to fade and paints clouds from below while anxiety grows into a flower named red. Snapping photos to steal light, which I hide in my pocket to later conjure safety, but land, land eludes me. And I began pacing in a rhythm. This is the dance of my culture. This is the dance of my youth and my feet lift off the ground. And so I float and I spin with no handhold inside, no means to make it stop until I'm swept up in the current. And then the images come first like flash hypersensory to the sensory fog that tastes of bile and rot. And it slowly slows the nauseating, spinning, rapid flipping familiar state of dissociation. A familiar test that eludes me like opening doors. And so I wait before them until memory returns. And after running from this burning building of a body, avoiding mirrors to evade the reflection of the wild-eyed animal eye shine of the familiar and the totem and then nothing. Then the weighty blanket of nothing, familiar, nothing. And I've returned, time lost, but grateful. I've survived another until the next full moon. And for my last piece, and so in that piece and other pieces, I also touch on topics of ritual abuse, which I won't go into deeply, but that is another form of violence against children. This is called while the world sleeps. I'll leave you on a better note. While the world sleeps, I negotiate and wrestle. I let go and become the night person sleepless, untamed and improper, irreverent and unmanageable, unpredictable and uncooperative. I unearth secrets and deconstruct stories, stories carefully crafted and rehearsed by the entire cast in the role of a lifetime, for a lifetime, a life sentence reeling. And I nurture and embrace the survivor, the one who face down monsters from untold fairy tales where the rest of the world finds most of us unworthy of being saved or being believed. And so again, we save ourselves unless we don't. And then the body goes uncounted by the unspeakable cancer called shame, and another is lost and another is lost. So tell me your secrets, the ones you don't even tell yourselves. What could you lose to tell another unworthy? The familiar tale, only the story is the same or the cast members names are different, but the story is the same. And so we share the secret handshake to acknowledge our membership. Only this time, it's different. We are the majority and the light no longer stings our eyes or perhaps it just makes us feel alive. Even pain is beautifully real. And you, my sisters count, I see you, I hear you. I will remember your name and I believe you. Thank you for giving me the honor of being here tonight. Thank you so much, Kellyanne. As always, I love your work. Our next reader, what to say about Natasha Denison. I love this poet. I love this poet. We've read joyful things together. We've read sad things together. We've read powerful things together and now we're gonna do this. Thank you so much for being here. Put your hands together for Natasha Denison. Thank you, Kim. And thank you, San Francisco Public Library for including me in this event. I am a woman of trans experience and I put the trans flag behind me just to give you a clue to be very subtle. And I'm also a ex-sex worker, a retired sex worker and I have been very happy to be involved with a lot of San Francisco Public Library events. I always have imposter syndrome. I always think, oh, they don't really want a trans woman with a history of sex work, but I'm taken seriously by the San Francisco Public Library because it's San Francisco and I am delighted and honored to be included in the work of the women that are reading today and I will read some pieces. The first one's called The Rainbow of Injury. One, you see red the first time he hits you. You are amazed how much blood spurts out of such a small wound. How the splatter pattern of that bashing is a Jackson Pollock dripping down the drywall of your mind. Two, nothing comes up the next day, but the morning after you are shocked to look in the mirror and see an angry petunia eye looking back at you. Purple as a fallen summer plum. Welch's grape jelly, ripe split fig face you. Three, are you blue? Your bruises solidify into a dense inky mass, blotted, raw-shacked. You are blue. Four, green, green, bilious green. Around your eye a spearmint shade of moth wing like flame of burning plastic. You feel a bit sick. Five, your bruises turn jaundice yellow just before he hits you the second time. You are a sucker for love, but you're not a fucking idiot for it. You load and cock your Glock and wait. You are not too yellow for this. Six, orange. You are wearing it in the correctional facility where you prove unable to be corrected. You wait, you brush and braid your hair, file your nails, so other bitches torn clothes and wait, carousel horse. You pull on your spandex mini dress, light blue and jack up your titties in a push-up bra, hot pink. Stagger out the door in your scuffed up heels, five inch to work the streets, to earn enough cash, to buy enough dope, to get high enough to work the streets. You cop the insults, cat calls, potty mouth taunts, cheap perverts and just suck it up girl. You gotta wear your thick skin when you're out there hour after hour, night after night trying to work the streets, to earn enough cash, to buy enough dope, to get high enough to work the street bitch. You suck cock after cock and take plenty in the back door, carry mouthwash and enema in your battered purse leopard print. Despite blistered feet and torn up ass, you persist in working the streets to earn enough cash, to get enough dope, to get high enough to work the streets. You count out your life in $20 bills, realize that everything's got a price, even you. You get sick to your stomach, sick to your soul but don't know how to stop the carousel of working the street to earn enough cash, to buy enough dope, to get high enough to work the street. The occasional arrest, a law enforcement vacation and a stint in detox or rehab, a welcome break but you always have to get back on that goddamn horse when you work the streets, to earn enough cash, to cop enough dope, to get high enough to work the streets. I've written a lot about Arlene Buenos and I've got a book coming out about Arlene Buenos in poetry. It's gonna be published by Be About It Press, the editor is Alexandra Norton. It's funny, I'd been shopping this little book around for about two years and it was rejected and rejected and rejected. I was almost ready to stick it in a drawer. And then Alexandra saw it and said, I would publish that in a heartbeat. And I said, oh really? And I realized all the people that had rejected that book were men. I thought, of course they did. Of course they rejected it. Of course they didn't want to publish it. Of course they didn't want to read it. But yeah, stupid me. I was just not smart enough to look for a woman publisher but the first one that saw it said, yep, yep. Anyhow, here's an Arlene Buenos poem because you tired me face down on the red back seat of your Cadillac, civilian, Volusia County and took away my power and made me float above myself and watch like some scuzzy bird of pigeon because no fucker would give me a job, not even waiting tables. So I had to turn tricks on the highway and because you had that 22 in the glove compartment waiting there just for me, I shot you. Because the rubbing alcohol. Because you had that cheesy mustard polo shirt with a little guy on a horse with a golf club that said stuff to me about a world I would never understand because everyone said, you don't belong here because Edgewater, Florida. Because you can stick your golf club up your ass because you said a hundred in Brevard County but you only gave me 50 and how am I supposed to pay the motel for me and my lady with 50? And there was 300 in your wallet. Thanks for that. Because in Daytona you smelt like Lister Mint like my grandfather and you had those ugly tombstone choppers probably dentures because you didn't rape me in Suwani County but you were gonna give them half the chance because it was a defensive preemptive strike your honor like the natural world eat or be eaten. This next poem is about the 1944 movie called Gaslight which I think many people have seen it. There was a British one earlier and it came from actually a play, a stage play but it's the 1944 one that's very famous, the film and I have used the plot of the film of Gaslight and interspersed it with a contemporary situation as a contrast contrasting and trying to discuss the concept of gaslighting in the context of the film which in a may or may not work and it's called Gaslight one 1944 the film, ingenue, falls hard and heavy for dapper, older man, hand kissing, spats, gloves, orchards, tuxedos under the gas lights. He tells her she is his only one. She believes him, there are chocolates. Two, you meet your Romeo on okay cupid, you date he pays. When it's too good to be true, you halfway know it is. There is subterranean connection. You watch him study your buttons, become adept at pushing them. It feels real. Three, she is not alarmed at first the Ingrid Bergman character at the scraping upstairs squirrels, rats. Notices the gaslight dimming. Light from gas is notoriously capricious. She tells herself could be overuse elsewhere in the street. Four, a few things don't add up. You dismiss them, don't want to be paranoid, nagging, fear you'll repel him like opposite magnets. His stories are inconsistent. He becomes distant when questioned about his comings and goings. You hold your tongue. Five, the Charles Boyer character tells her she is imagining things, has an artistic disposition, a febrile imagination. The missing objects are merely misplaced. The light from the gas is regular. It is she who is not. She believes him. Six, parking tickets from the other side of the bridge receipts her unusual amounts, house paint. Three hour delays, the evidence mounts pointing to some other life. He is translucent. You start to doubt him. Seven, he pulls out his fob chain, but no watch. Lo and behold, it is in her purse, but she can't recall putting it there. He sympathizes, suggests she travels to a spa for her hysteria, her nerves. Did she take it? She's not certain either way. Eight, you startle him. His hand flies up in self-defense. A reflex blow, he says. He doesn't mean to strike you, yet it draws blood. Says he would never hurt you. You choose to believe him. After all, it is your own fault nagging him. So he says. Nine, everything she sees feels unreliable. Just when she's convinced she's going mad, suddenly the denoisement, stolen jewels, hidden in the attic, previous marriage to her murdered aunt, desperate search for the treasure, hell hath no fury. Ten, you empty his workout bag to wash his sweats, boxer shorts, a deck of cards, socks, a telescopic steel truncheon. You realize you don't know him at all. His response is 51-50. Commitment, it's what you've always wanted. 11, when the murdering jewel thief is lashed to a chair, she says she will release him, help him escape, avoid incarceration, but no, just messing with you. She says, or am I? Maybe I am, and maybe I'm not. 12, you get your purse, get ready to go to Claudine's. You need a friend. He blocks the doorway. Your friends are all against me. He says, you will make a fool of yourself with your false claims, your imaginings. You stay. Thank you. I'm going to close my little set with a love poem. After all of that. I don't generally write love poems, but here's one. It's called Collision. When we met on the 4th of July, I saw dahlias in your eyes blooming. When you kissed me, entwined your hot tongue with mine, fireworks exploded. Hot pink camellias gigantic against the night sky. Thank you. For the record, Natasha is one of the poets that I'd like to have on my team come the zombie apocalypse. Love you, lady. Our next poet is what kind of things to say about Ramona? Ramona Webb is, I believe at the moment, a cultural center director, am I correct? Yeah. A cultural center director, one of the bravest human beings I know, a remarkable poet and stunning in every way. And I look forward to the time that we can have you back at our kitchen table. Please welcome Ramona Webb. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. I appreciate the honor of the invitation. Grateful to be here in the room with such brilliant voices. So my name is Ramona Laughingbrook. I'm Afro Creek Muskogee. My pronouns are she and they. And I'm gonna be reading some poems that are from my one woman show, How to Catch a Rapist in 12 parts with Chronicles, my journey to prosecuting the man who raped me 25 years ago. I'm also gonna be reading some new work from this new series that I'm entitling The Healing Survived Journey. And I'll be referencing some things that are, that can be triggering like my nervous breakdown and mental health differences that occurred after the trial and things of that nature. So this is another buckle up, but I'm sure everybody will survive if I. So starting this beautiful moment with the story. Survivor of rape. Vagina beaten and scarred, internal touch reached too far, jagged edges plunged, sticky not slippery doom, soon filled with transition and transmission, a baby bites to remember you by, fertile fires cry no. You don't know what it feels like to be raped by you. You, still looking to be a victim too, I too now bear your scars of dirty drinking and dirty thinking, not of my remorse. See your loose habits brought me genital scars. You too high to remember, your face painted with pain and regret, fear no longer anger, let go, pill addiction, throat chokes with pills and nobody knows my secret, no nobody knows my secret, no nobody knows my secret, internal chunks of nothing fill the grass and God refuses my offer. Mental scars begin, bitches and whores I became, myself to blame, these your blaring whispers, if I can't have you, no one can, promises, promises. Now no one will, raped and hated, blame falls with loud hellos, fuck you too late bitch, I love you. Apology accepted, I now sipping bag bottles more than now and again. Cancer stick addict becomes me, mama's warning's true, if you play with trash you'll get it in your eye, smash through walls trying to fight you broken apologies and I love you, cut my ears with forgiveness for those who have not sinned, keep you from behind bars, I now filled with regret and regression, learned the lesson the hard way, still stuck in your pain glass illusion box, cause see it was a back alley, a back seat, coaxing a little girl, first refusal, the fist hit the roof and no, black eye explanation wanted, decline fear, breath hot upon me, dress slipped arms pinned into your chest, we could not remove you, painful punishes and promises of one more minute, one more minute, one more minute, one more minute, passed out mind split like vagina, time lost, minutes maybe, I will seem regret so much regret, knife still slashing my womb, my heart bleeds to death and I die and I die and I die, you cuddle and console my bledded remains, puke go eyes now shamed at endeavor, not a cum stain rubber creates no illusion, cause see you say it first in amazement with damn, I just raked you, but I am dead and do not hear you, many short apologies soon follow, many dirty angry fingerprints with hot showers trying to erase, but I cannot forget the sleigh of my soul and your torment is guilt gives me no pleasure because of you I have climbed from the pit of death stomach and poured life back into my Godhead embryo, born into knowledge of self now for an eternity you get to conceive for the road less traveled, is lonely and cold redemption at her meat and I will know a greater joy cause I have known this great pain, for I no longer even fear you, you are now just a mere conclusion in my lifetime. And so now I've decided to press charges against you and it all began when I stopped being a victim and became a survivor of rape. Now bitch, I love me too. So beginning with the story, thank you for holding space for that and coming in with the morning, what every day beyond that moment looks like. Good morning heartbeat. Good morning heartbeat, racing to the wind, I look to the window still steady my eyes on the light in between those latches, clutch the bed tight to gain my grip and gaze and we start the countdown to breathing. The indiety tax start at 4 a.m. 10, somebody please stop the horses from pounding in my chest. Nine, it will get better. Eight, remember you are worthy, you are valuable, you are loved. Seven, you will get it all done, forgive yourself because you are forgiven, you are forgiving and there is no forgiveness that could forgive what has happened to you. So just forgive yourself for thinking of this forgiveness in this moment. Six, remember to inhale deeply and exhale completely. Believe in the power of your own breath. Five, you are beautiful, brilliant and brave. You can get up this morning. Four, you are saying they cannot get you and it is true, they cannot get you anymore. Three, you are God's favorite. Two, you are loved, lovable and loving. One, get up. You were born with purpose and intention, stand in your goddess. One, get up. This next piece is entitled in 12 parts. How to catch a rapist. When he writes to you, do not respond. When he tells you that he loves you, do not believe him. When he likes your friends post grind your teeth and pretend face brick is not real. I am not really here, he is not really here. He is stalking me like a victim, what? He is playing safe and gentle pretend is his thing. He is laying and waiting for you to fall. He knows how I feel, wait until he is bitter and mean. Then tell him the truth. Watch him not believe it, hold his e-hand and show him your memories. Tell him to ride them farther back than he wants to. Tell him no, tell him he's a liar. Then tell him you'll call him when it's all over. Tell him when he writes it all down, he will hear your voice dangle yourself as damsel. Be the bait and wait for him to hunt you and he will hunt you. Let the air be vacant between you, let him spin on it. And when the devil asks you to dance, you say yes. And believe that your wings are faster, run when it all possible, hide in the bottom of a bottle in the back of the smoking section, hide in starvation. But remember that running don't need no legs. I thank you to my fibroids. Dear Fibroid, the really big one that looks like a football. When they showed me your picture, I knew why you were there, why you had come. In my vision, I saw it. It's so that all the pain, all the hurt, all the anger, all the fear and frustration, all the moments of loss, all of the moments where you didn't believe, they could go there. They could fill up like a balloon and call themselves in a home, not in your head, not in your blood, not in your bones. Dear Fibroid, thank you for holding it there. The doctor will pluck you soon. Poem in vacation for the black Madonna. Blessed be the divine feminine. The oneness of the goddess. Blessed be the sweet daybreak in her song. The blooming in her womb, belly full of future and promise sprung from the well of her oneness with a divine fluidity in time. She, the ultimate creators of world and craft, the great goodness of life, blood and serenity from she springs forth the living waters, waiting in sunshine and grandeur, temples she is, sweet, sacred dream of humanity and healing, sure to our soul's reclamation. This is a part of the journey back and I'll close with this poem. I'm reclaiming my time. I'm reclaiming my time. I no longer give you permission to walk all over my space and by permission, I mean silence. You may not claim my light as your own. I am not part of your emotional labor force. I gives a fuck about your fragility. I'm reclaiming my time because I deserve time, a legacy of time, an apothecary of time. I am not in construction. I am in carpentry, smooth brown edges, sweetening sassafras curves, loving black and brown bodies endowed with creationism. I have no need for these bricks I've been building. You can have them back now. My hands are made for a sweeter vision. You see, I'm reclaiming my time and the vision is on its way. And I know justice, you've been a courtesy call on hold. Deep in the mahogany wood soaked into the cracks, you're a ghost living in the machine, waiting for the Florida crumber. I'm waiting for this ceiling to fall around my waist, waiting for a red sub-direction of my dignity. I'm waiting for the glass to break for that apparition of a glitch in the system, a moment for me to slide through. I'm reclaiming my time. I no longer have the patience to wait for you to let me go. So I will set myself free unapologetically. I will take up all the space. I will hold all the hope and I will shore up all the belief and I will be brave and I will be courageous because I am reclaiming my time and you no longer have the power to move me out of my own way. It's my life, my livelihood and my legacy. Thank you so much for listening to my work. I really appreciate it. And I'm honored to be in this space in this room with each of you. That last piece was a piece that I wrote with UCSF I'm a poet in residence there. I've got apologetic obstetrics. I work on art integration, the healthcare. And this is the most healing practice I know is the art that we share and the collective story that we get to build through the sharing of our stories. Thank you. Wow. Wow. Thank you so much. Our last poet for the day is Molly Fisk, who is the emerita poet laureates of Nevada County. Yeah. Thank you. I'm sorry, I got knocked a little sideways by that last poetry stuff. Also, you may have noticed during the evening she is also the perch for one black cat. And she's a good friend and we met each other later than we probably should have, but I am really grateful for her being here. Please welcome Molly Fisk. Thank you. Two different black cats. The third one is afraid of the computer. Thanks to everybody who's here listening tonight to you other poets and your beautiful voices to the San Francisco Public Library, which is where I learned how to read and to Kim Shuck and to everyone taking part in one city, one book, especially Chanel Miller, who might salute. I'm joining you from my house on unceded Nisanon land in Nevada City, California at 2,500 feet above sea level. I'm gonna read you some homes from two different books and then one that's not yet in any book. And I guess the usual trigger warnings for some of this stuff, but you've already been prepared. So I think you'll be okay. This is called Walking Down Franklin Street. It's still there, the weary three-decker. It still leans inward from the outside walls. I used to wake up in that house and lie in bed alone, smiling, looking out the tall windows at early cars going by and neighbor walking his old slow dog before work. He'd move out of sight, leave me with sunlight that spilled in and made a warm lake of the floor. Nothing's as simple as it looks. The man I loved and lived with once threw me against that front hall wall. Stars floated lightly on the surface of my eyes. Little pieces of white plaster dust drifted in the air around us. Time went so slow. I had a chance to think about the precarious lives of women, anonymous dark Egyptians hauling water, pioneers in checked sunbonnets who trudged beside their wagons. Nuns bent over herb gardens in 14th century France. Waiting for his next move, I saw all the women who were held against walls. I could hear their thoughts. We were the same person. Our breasts lifted and fell in time to each other's ragged breathing. Our eyes slid briefly toward the door before dragging themselves to his face. The human face I rate, corded neck, eyes raging black. The mouth contorted into that painful, unsustainable shape. No one could hold onto it. On the disinclination to scream. If I had been a 10 year old stranger and you had tripped me in a dark alley, say downtown, instead of our mutual living room, I'm sure I would have screamed. If in the alley you had straddled me as fast, your knees clamping my elbows into asphalt, not the blue Chinese dragons of our living room rug, I might have been quiet there too. When you opened my mouth with your heavy flat thumbs and filled it with pain and flesh, I would have choked in the alley as anyone would choke. But if you had grown then and stood up, walked away from the dark street, leaving me to vomit and shake alone, I might have been saved. I could describe you to policemen. Perhaps their composite would match your photo in the Harvard reunion guide. Your fingerprints lifted from the collar of my dress might be found in Coast Guard files. If they never found you and there was no trial, I could have gone home to people who loved me. Horrified, enraged, they would rock me to sleep in soft arms. I would have been frightened maybe forever of alleys, strange men and the dark, but encouraged by the world who would hate you on my behalf. I would have been as safe as a 10-year-old can be. Instead, I rose quietly from the Chinese rug and went upstairs to wash. No sound escaped me. I couldn't afford to throw up and it wasn't the first time. Candy bar tutorial. Thank you for all the attention and hand waving and your beautiful smiles and your blue lipstick. Candy bar tutorial. What he leaves on the bed or slips into her pocket after the car wash during the Saturday hike. Baby Ruth mounds, big hunk, Milky Way, bit of honey. What he whispers, you made me do it. Don't pretend you don't like it. Don't tell, I'll hurt your mother. What he leaves on the bed or slips into her pocket. She eats right then or sneaks into a shoebox at the top of the closet. Her mother won't like it. Mounds, big hunk, Milky Way, baby Ruth, bit of honey. When the man in the next town murders his wife with a nail gun, she thinks of 10 pennies scattered among what he leaves on the bed or slips into her pocket. Setting the table for dinner, knife blades face inward. The aluminum taste in her mouth is almost erased by Milky Way, baby Ruth, big hunk, mounds, bit of honey. But not completely, still the hint of brine to remind her of home and family, sickening harmony. What he left on the bed and slipped into her pocket, big hunk, Milky Way, baby Ruth, mounds, bit of honey. I wanna say that I don't believe necessarily in forgiveness, but I do believe in understanding. This is called belonging. Long after I'd remembered most of it, after my mother had said, you've wrecked my life. And Ellen asked me not to send her the poems because they ruined her sex life. And Tom wondered aloud if I were recalling a past life. After Nan said over the phone, by the way, I don't believe you. And Henry told some of my friends at dinner that I'd always been a liar. After I'd gained a hundred pounds and begun to carry it like an open window. And after enough time had passed to dull my anger down to a simmer. I walked to the kitchen one day, a sunny day, a Tuesday, heading for Haagen-Dazs or Ben and Jerry's, and caught my face in the mirror, unawares. The rosy cheeks, slight clench in the jaw, and looked back at myself directly with my father's eyes, the purpose in them clear, all the power he carried toward my bed that I was bearing in the direction of ice cream. And I understood how humans do what they do, how they can't not do it. And at that moment, I loved my father, so dangerous and helpless, and loved myself for loving him again. Release. Both shoulders drop into their sockets and nestle there. The balls rolling slightly in their pads as the arms swing. Nothing to bear or carry. No invisible metaphoric burden weighing them down. And the pelvic girdle tips at just the right angle. Leg bones coaxed from their outward straying, realigned so patella and toes point truly forward in the direction of travel. No twist or torque, no battery of muscle caught in support of history. Mid-turn, wary animal looking back to check for danger. No constant subcutaneous shutter that for years defined the hours. A physical music so familiar, its crippling notes didn't even register as out of tune. It's all poetic in the end. The low hum of insects dismantling a body, buzz and tug. The skin's flakes disappearing into tiny mandibles. The eggs laid in too soft, soon to be putrid flesh. There's a loveliness to every ruined thing. The chassis accordion beside highway 20 gleams in moonlight like a wished on penny. Shit sinks through the tank's dark layers with slow grace giving up its liquid to green the world overhead. Show me something with no beauty. You can't. The father entering his own child. Beyond the tears, see how their closed eyes are exactly the same shape. Thank you so much. Keep with us doing all this good work. I am so grateful. Thank you so much for being here. I wanted to say something about both of these shows last month and this one tonight, which is I need people who, both who have been invited to read and the people who were not, who are here to listen. The heft of what I asked everyone to do, everyone who participated. This is not easy to carry and I did not do it. I'm thinking. I knew a lot of what we were going to hear because I know these poets. There are a lot of people in this room who both read and didn't read who I love. And some of the people who are here read last time. And I'm just inutterably grateful to have had, I think it was 12 in total, poets to help me understand what life looks like from different perspectives after violence, the post-violence moment. And I'm really grateful. And I hope you're all grateful for having been able to hear them. I just, I'm so overwhelmingly impressed. And thank you everybody who read, everybody who read last time. The library that lets me do stuff like this. I feel like quite often when people hear that there will be a poetry reading, this is not what they imagine that looks like. And I'm really grateful. Thank you so much, John Smalley. Probably Michelle Jeffers who really, really lets me get away with quite a bit that's not expected. So thank you. Next week, Friday, we will be doing a reading on the subject. Well, it's Asian American women speaking out. And that will also be fairly heavy. So, you know, if your seat belt's still intact, come on out. Again, thank you everybody, everybody involved in this. I'm given a lot of latitude, not just by the library, but by the poets. And I'm enormously grateful. Thank you all. Thank you, Kim. Thank you so much, Kim. Thank you, Kim. Thank you, Kim. Thank you to all of the readers. Everybody, beautiful reading. Thank you all. That was a powerful, wonderful reading. Thanks for the courage to open your mouths and speak. And the one that I read, you know, if you're a teacher and a child actually gives you the trust that will expose this thing, do not send them home to their parents. Yes, you send them to the abuser and that's the one of the sickest things going. I've seen that happen too many times. And so what I did was I just finally started getting information and giving it to the child and say, keep talking until somebody hears you. And then send it home. Yes. Now that backfires on big time, yeah. Yes. I'm moved by all of you, truly. Thank you all. I can't even express enough my gratitude for you being here tonight and for sharing all of you out with us. And so powerful. And until next time, friends, we'll see you soon. I put the link to Kim's upcoming Asian American Women Poetry event coming up, so please check it out. Sunday, we have poetry under the dome virtual. Join us. Good night, friends. Thank you. Good night. Much love. Thank you. Good night. Thank you. Thank you so much. Good night.