 Apologies for my sweating. Just I'm nervous that we haven't done a hybrid program like this. We, a year and a half ago, shut down, moved to all virtual. And I'm absolutely thrilled that we're starting to see, I'm especially thrilled to see our performers, our readers, our poets. I'm also thrilled to see our public, our residents, the people who live around the Bay Area who want to come and see this. I also call it a hybrid program because we're streaming, we're filming, we're recording, and we're here. So it presents a lot of challenges. So I want to thank our performers for pushing us to do this and getting us to do this. Our Latinx poetry, our poetry here in the city, I think, has been historically very important. I'm really proud that this particular program is one of our early programs that we're celebrating this year with. I want to thank the friends of the library who generously support all of our programming, this one as well. Our library commission who supports us in a lot of different ways. And I think I have a commissioner here. I think I see the top of her. Dr. Lopez is with us and has supported us, not just by being on the library commission, but I know that some of our programs has been a participant in our Zoom program. So thank you for being here as well. I'm totally not going off of the script, so I should get back to it. We typically start our programs with the land acknowledgment. This is one that we recently adopted at the library, working with the American Indian Cultural District here in San Francisco. I haven't done these in person in so long. So I'm like, whoa, I'm starting to hyperventilate. So I have to calm down. It's not like a screen in front of me. The San Francisco Public Library acknowledges that we occupy the unceded ancestral homeland of the Ramaytush Ohlone peoples who are the original inhabitants of the San Francisco peninsula. We recognize that the Ramaytush Ohlone understand the interconnectedness of all things and have maintained harmony with nature for millennia. We honor the Ramaytush Ohlone peoples for their enduring commitment to Wahrep, Mother Earth. As the indigenous protectors of this land and in accordance with their traditions, the Ramaytush Ohlone have never ceded, lost, nor forgotten their responsibilities as the caretakers of this place, as well as for all peoples who reside here in their traditional homeland. As uninvited guests, we affirm their sovereign rights as First Peoples and wish to pay our respects to the ancestors, elders, and relatives of the Ramaytush community. We recognize, to respectfully honor Ramaytush peoples, we must embrace and collaborate meaningfully to record indigenous knowledge in how we care for San Francisco and all its people. And then before I go on real quick, this is the beginning of our Latin X Heritage Month celebration where we traditionally want to highlight and celebrate people like me and like a lot of us and this tradition in the city. A couple of two programs I really want to quickly point out is author Jaime Cortez on September 26th at 2. We'll be in conversation with Yossi Marreras. Yes, thank you. Also, our big library supporter, Carolina de Robertis, as well, another one. And Julian Delgado Lopera, who, what's she writing? Fiebretofrica, yes, yes, yeah. So yeah, there we are. And I think she was shortlisted for some of you. OK, they, again, I'm going off the cuff. Sorry, I'm too excited right now. Those are two programs coming up September 26th and September 28th. Local authors, please check them out. They're wonderful. OK, sorry. What are we doing today? Floricanto, members of the San Francisco International Floricanto are going to talk about their mission and going to read from their latest works. This is featuring Josiah Luis Alderete, Hector San of Hector, Ricardo Tavares, and Monica Sarasua. San Francisco Floricanto promotes literature and culture along the 24th Street Corridor. Floricanto Literary Festival illuminates the literary arts, enhances the collective mental well-being and confidence of the Mission District neighborhood and the city at large. Floricanto promotes literature and culture along the 24th Street Corridor. The Floricanto Literary Festival illuminates literary arts, improves collective mental well-being and confidence of the Mission District neighborhood and city in general. Now introducing Josiah Luis Alderete, who is a full-blooded pocho. I love that. Spanglish-speaking poeta, who first learned how to write poesía in the kitchen of his mama's Mexican restaurant. He was one of the founding members of Bay Area Outspoken Word Group, the Molotov Mouths, and is the curator and host of the long-running monthly Chicano Latinx reading series, Speaking A Show Look. This year, he had the honor of being one of the recipients of the 2021 San Francisco Foundation Nomadic Press Literary Award and also had his first book of poems, Baby A Show Look, and Old Pochos, published by Blackfreighter Press, which sold out at our program last week, just last Wednesday. No more copies left. But he has more today. I'm going to leave this here for you. And please welcome Josiah. Thank you. Gracias, Alejandro. What's happening, familia? How are you all? It's a beautiful day to be brown. No doubt. Yeah, so basically, I'm going to introduce the elder in the Floricanto group. And by elder, I don't mean he's like a viejito. I just mean he's been in the group longer than anyone. This is a dear pocho that has contributed so much in a quiet way to the literature of Sampancho. He ran the Pandoosa poetry series years ago. A reading series actually happened in La Reina Bakery on 24th Street, which is a beautiful and amazing thing. Poetry and Pandoosa. You can't get better than that. So yeah, let me just read this bio very quickly. Ricardo Tavares is a Bay Area educator and arts organizer. Ricardo's recent projects include editing a student poetry anthology and the forthcoming Pandoosa poets anthology being put out by Pochino Press, mi gente. You can finally, Ricardo, jogging along, making like, yeah, give a clap for that shit. Come on, y'all. Come on, man. Plus, it's Pochino Press. So, you know, come on. Yes, publishers of Ben Baxiara and the Nica, Cim Veruenza, Norman Zelaya. So, you know, you got to love that. You got to love Pochino. So you can find Ricardo jogging along Lake Merritt or trails in the Oakland Hills. And Ricardo's going to read, start this off and he's all going to tell you all a little bit about the Floricanto. Okay, so give it up for the one and only Ricardo Tavares. Good afternoon. Thanks for having us. Thanks for having me. Thanks for this incredible space. It's an honor to be here. Spent a lot of time just kind of walking through these stacks long ago. So it's kind of nice to see it from this perspective. So the Floricanto has been a part of the mission district for a very long time. So it's nothing new, right? But every time that it rematerializes, it's a little different each time because times change and the issues that are affecting our communities also change. This version of the Floricanto began in 2015 when Alejandro Murguia, the prophet, he said, hey, let's do this again. And he put together a squad and little by little, we put it together and it's been going on since then. Now Floricanto has ancestral roots, Floricanto, the spring, so Cipilli. And when we see during the Chicano movement, there is this new life springing up in Chicano, Latinx communities everywhere. And it begins to incorporate all arts becomes a multi-genre movement, literature, visual arts, dancing, mural painting, theater, film. So it becomes a beautiful space where if you feel the spirit to be creative and to uplift others, there was a place for you. Now Floricanto, I guess in my kind of a limited way of looking at it, I see it as a movement asserting our dignity and humanity. And I thought of Lansing Hughes when Hughes said, I'm eating in the kitchen. And you ignore me, you're at the table, but I'm growing stronger and beautiful. That's Floricanto, right? Affirming ancestral knowledge and excavating the cosmic unconscious, reconnecting to the root that was before all the borders started dividing us before the colonialism, before the imperialism. I'm gonna get started and I'll do a piece that, or read a piece that was part of an anthology with El Tecolote, a mission newspaper, which just had its, or is having their 50th year anniversary. Yeah, support them, definitely. Viva el mole con guajolote, colorado, almendrado, emaciated ghosts of archbishops and viceroy's drift on pre-Columbian aromas, rattling spoons on cobblestones, dragging copper pots, aching for Aztec gold, pangs satiated by kitchen saints of colonial Puebla. Amarillo, fraipa squalls, bulky burlap robe, bump spices into boiling broth. Holy urgency transfigures water into mole. Juan de Palafoc, Simendoza, Spain's viceroy decreed mole a colonial treasure between steaming mouthfuls. Chichillo, convent of Santa Rosas impoverished nuns at wit's end while in archbishop waits to be fed. Sor Andrea de la Succión mills, still bits and spice, under divine inspiration. Her fragrant sauce poured on wiry turkeys, the sanctified plump gut pleased. Bibian, long before Cortes sold into Veracruz, Moyi simmered in earthen pots poured on iguana, acholots, acosil, larvae, insect eggs, mushrooms, turkey, duck, dog, deer. Negro, verde, mancha manteles, cosmic pasconcellian sauce drips from Tlaltecutli's nine mouths as starving colonial ghosts wander them in beads at dusk, whispering ingredient, rosaries, cacahuate, pastilla, pasas, pepitas, calabaza, piñones, platano, canela, chocolate, angonjolí, ajo, ancho, nuez, cilantro, chipotle. So before I read this one, I just wanna say, if you see me out on the street and I don't say hi to you, it's because I gotta be tough. All right, I gotta be tough. You're not gonna see me out there eating a paleta with a paletero, you're not gonna see me doing that. All right, ornelote, gotta be tough. I'm kidding, okay, no, no, I gotta be tough. All right, this poem's titled, El Macho. El macho never gets blisters from chopping wood. El macho only wears rugged looking shoes. El macho wears boots in bed. El macho says getting ahead means cheating chumps. El macho never eats red sauce cooked by strange women. When exasperated, el macho's sweat is flammable. El macho may shape shift into a gentleman to seduce young ladies. El macho grows stronger with every emotion he suppresses. El macho never loses underwear lest they be buried under a woman's house. El macho flirts aggressively to avoid any question of his masculinity. El macho land, conversations end and abrupt silences. El macho can paraphrase feminist and gender schema theory to dawn a cardboard hat of gender dynamic consciousness. El macho expects food to appear with the wave of a belt. El macho concludes women who deny him must be lesbians. El macho does not speak to kids, but instead speaks at kids. El macho only smiles when his team wins or when he's drunk. El macho only weeps when his team loses or when he's drunk. All right, I'm gonna do one more. And yeah, thanks for the invite. The morning news declared the last polar bear died today. Morning zoo gockers had no idea as photos of the cuddly corpse saturated their online media profiles. The networks rolled out stock video montages of a fuzzy cub biting into a pink fish birthday cake. A slightly bigger cub rolling and pawing at jack-o'-lanterns for honey, water, ice cubes. A waist-high cub bounding across the enclosure, sniffing out peeled muskmelons oozing periwinkle frosty. Then a hulking bear tearing into a refrigerator box covered bright in Rockwellian gift wrap. In the crowd, some slurped corn syrup as donut-sized crumbs fell from dried teeth. Wobbly tots snuggled felt cub facsimiles. Gift shop chatter filtered over the grounds, raucous macaws perched muted by grinding cash registers. In the end, a photo of a swaddle cub anchored the segment as though softening the somber tone for breakfast tables across America. Thank you. Give it up one more time for Ricardo Tavares, please. Yeah, bro. Palms about a comida, mole, and machismo. You know you're at a Latinx poetry reading, bro. Thanks for starting us off, right, Ricardo? Shit. Mole, man. Kill a man for some mole. Okay, next up, I wanna introduce Monica Zarazua, Pochino Press creator of this amazing press that supported so many of our gente in our barrier literature here. So let me just read her bio real quick. Monica has an MFA in creative writing from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. She has published short stories in the Collagist, the Asia Literary Review, and 805. In 2012, she co-founded Pochino Press, yes. Yes. Which publishes work that seeks new conceptions of culture and story making. From 2013 to 2018, Monica taught grades four and five at International School in Avis, Ababa, Ethiopia. Currently, she lives and works in Oakland, Califas. Mejanta, give it up for Monica Zarazua. I'm excited to be here, and thank you for listening. I'm gonna read it, so I don't write poetry, I write fiction and short stories, and this is an excerpt from a novel. And so just some background, the main character, she's working at this company, and they're doing nefarious things. And she doesn't know at first, but then she realizes one of the side effects. She wakes up one morning, and she looks down on the bathroom sink, and there's this little thing that looks like a leaf, and she's like, oh, what's that thing? And it turns out some memory that fell from her head. And so as she learns more about what this company is doing, she has to reclaim this memory before she can take any kind of action. So the excerpt I'm gonna read is from when she recovers this memory. And, okay, I'll just read. I'll just read. The heat was different here. More humid and soaked into everything, the pavement, the leaves, the steps. The personality of the sun was different too. It wasn't as close or as bright, it was fatter, heavier, and a richer gold. There was a huge lawn and steps from the door that led down to a clothesline with sheets hanging. I placed my hand on them and could almost feel the water evaporating drop by drop. Past the barn, there was a stretch of woods, so I headed there next. The trees were protective, like the ones in Jorge William's story, but I knew from my own imagination, from the way he told it, that his trees were towering redwoods, whereas these were birch and maple trees. It was less a forest and more a grove, filled with light, not shadow. Filled with yellows, bright greens, and the earth held warmth. In this grove of trees you sang, you laughed throwing back your head or you sat on a smooth rock made warm by the sun. This was the right place to recover the memory. I closed my eyes and looked at the younger version of myself. She wasn't a stranger, I knew her intimately. Bad things happen to girls sometimes. Sometimes they can make better decisions. She knew this from her friends, statistics show this, and she knew from personal experience. Growing up, her and her friends had a list of non-negotiables when it came to dating. Never date someone without a car, with a revoke license, who smokes drinks every day after work and sometimes before, who spends more time getting ready than you do. Is a DJ bartender? Sorry if this applies to you. A DJ bartender are working on multiple undefined projects and of course showers and cologne or perfume. Of course they had all at some point fallen off the wagon but they trusted each other enough to talk about it. Laugh it out and they always came back together again because together they could get through anything. But there was one story she didn't tell her friends. She just didn't think about it for a long time even before the memory fell on the counter. It was a simple situation. There was a man with magic so she wanted to help him see all that he was. It was a cool evening but between them there was heat and that's what she remembered. The heat and the last thing she said that made him laugh. After that she didn't remember anything. She woke up tangled in a sheet on his bed. He was already awake sitting at his desk with his headphones on staring into his computer screen leaning in concentrating like whatever music he was working on, he'd been at it for a while. He took a few minutes but he glanced her way and smiled, oh you're awake. She cleared her throat, trying to piece together the night before but there was nothing to piece together. There weren't any flashbacks, no memories. Ooh what you getting into today? He asked glancing at his watch. I gotta pick a couch, up a couch in 20. Erin's she said, she pulled the sheet higher up her chest, a feeling coiled tight and heavy inside her. To get him out of the room she asked for a glass of water. He broke his gaze from the screen again and flashed his dimples of course. As soon as he left she looked for her clothes and pulled all of them on except for her socks. It was too much to try and get those soft things on so she rolled them into a ball and put them in her pocket. He was back with the water and we sat on the edge of the bed at sink. He stroked her thigh but this time there was no heat. That thing inside coiled tighter. As the water went down her throat she felt its coolness. The night was done, the sun had risen and there'd be no moving into the day together. She couldn't see his magic anymore. She couldn't see any magic. Everything was flat, like the world was two dimensional and she needed to get out of there. This place where one could become trapped, seduced, voiceless, missing the third dimension and where meaning died slowly, slowly. The water said, I'm flowing in you now, get out. She pulled on her shoes and when he saw her intent to leave he tried to keep her. He flashed his smile again and it was true. Before this morning, that smile had made fire burn inside her but now it was nothing. She listened to his voice instead of his words and heard the lack of timber, the lack of truth. She searched one more time for his magic and realized he'd chosen to hide it away. We make choices she thought as she opened the door. Just before she let go of the doorknob he pressed himself into her. Call me later. She walked without looking back. It was mid morning. The dew drops were rising in the sky to become clouds and the further she walked from that door from the shadow bedroom with the maroon sheets and the plants coated in dust that she thought she might wash off to help them grow and those curtains in that man's home that she thought she might open to let in the natural light. The further she walked, the more it all ceased to exist. Never again would she return there or to where it started on the second floor of the club where live salsa bands played. He had reminded her of home in an aching way because she just moved into the city and this city seemed to be full of the same sort of people who listened to NPR, read the New York Times and thought they knew everything about everything but they knew nothing outside of their own small circle. Even still, even though he reminded her of home she knew he wasn't a good person. The moment he introduced her to the other woman who was sniffing the air like she'd smelled her before because she had. They'd heard the echo of each other's voice and a stirring in the air when they passed a corner the other one had just passed. When he introduced them his face was laughing under his skin so pleased with himself. When she asked about the other woman he told her there was nothing that he was handling it. That's when rage filled her, a white rage that kind of makes you lose your mind slash tires kick down somebody's door for and part of her wanted to be filled with it because it felt like not dying and it was a kind of power movement but she knew too they were just playing games and so it was time to leave for good and not look back. So she stepped one, two, one, two the dance floor the apartment him the other woman became black and white footage from another era and she didn't tell her friends what happened because it was done. Okay, so I had recovered the memory and within that memory there was a black hole a loss of time from the night to the morning and in that void there was nothing to remember because no memories had formed. Maybe I ceased to exist except as a buzzing machine cells and organs, tissues and muscles but that was it all the parts functioning but nothing moving. He must have put something in my drink he must have and I hadn't thought of it in that moment I only wanted to get away and I did and then I didn't think back to him or that night I didn't want to remember the shame I didn't want to remember the way I'd been having fun and then suddenly maybe I still was or maybe I wasn't, maybe I passed out and he let me sleep and maybe he hadn't it hadn't felt like he'd been inside me but how would I know two years later? I would never really know unless I found him and asked him and even then unless he had an overhaul of mind, body and spirit he'd lie and anything and everything could have happened in that gap or nothing could have happened. I hated remembering the details the adrenaline was in my legs again and I didn't want to remember but now I did and now I remembered how much I didn't know about that night the sun had moved and the air was pulling off the stone wasn't comfortable anymore so I stood up I walked back through the woods and the light was gentle. The leaves were moving up and down and in the wind there was a freshness I felt it in my hair and on my skin and it was all so gentle there in this grove where you could sing and you could laugh throwing back your head and the scent of the leaves on the earth and the solidity of the earth and a faint path the quiet train tracks overgrown with grass and it was all so gentle in there among the trees. I didn't know why but I started to cry as if all the dew drops and all the water from the laundry hanging in the wind were pouring out of me. Thank you guys. One more time for Monica's other two welcome to the literature as a medicina y'all. Okay, next up the most mysterious member of our group by far Hector, son of Hector lives in Oakland, Califas. He is the child of Mexican immigrants currently works in the hospital and dreams of short stories and writes poetry in secret. Give it up me, Henta, for Hector, son of Hector. Before the hills of San Francisco I stand on a mission hospital rooftop watching smog centipede its way through the Los Angeles skyline creeping at the feet of buildings and mountains. At one mile high I see the luminescent waters of Mexica streets down at the Nostitlan the up and coming neighborhood. The rich once lived here, flattened it, the poor repurposed it, salted it, the capitalists now want it back. Everywhere this film breathes every day rewinding and playing a continuous loop conquistavarios is nothing new. The land of the natives has always been better asked the priests about their missions. That's the barber where Oakland gets its hair done while the locals haven't left yet. They say the East Bay gets more sun. East LA's got better food. Colonia Juarez has tortillerias putting masa for the masses. Where is that a printing press? Food always tasted better on Abuela's mesa. Mi hijo come tortilla pa que te llenes. Ponle crema y sal. O sal el limón. Por lo menos sal. Good evening everyone, I am Hector, son of Hector. Thank you to the San Francisco Public Library and I don't know how it works but I'm sure there's many people involved but thank you for inviting us to read here today. Thank you to everyone present as well as in the virtual world. I don't know how many people are out there, but hello. It's interesting, this poem also ended in salt. Just like Ricardo's poem when he said that last line I was just like oh shoot, okay. Anyway, for those of you unfamiliar with my work here's a self-portrait called Esta de Hermes. Outside, most all brown of different tones, lined with green roads, red where I speak from, white at the palms. Inside mostly blue, blue not as the sky, more like the ocean, an absent blue, blue only in reflection. La Malesa. Something fell from me. Like a tree losing branches during storms, cracked jagged edges remain open, fire would touch my feet. I move my head into the oldest roots, constantly absorbed, cradled in shade, I cry over fall shed, struggle just to climb, philosophize lost parts, doubt each new dream, survive in soil beneath leaves of grass, out of reach like stars above, either I decompose or extend myself in search of water and nutrition. So I try to grow toward the sun, to break the line only to learn that I am a weed in a field of marigolds and magnolias. This was written initially for my sister's first daughter when she was just born. Manos, para Liliana. Estas manos son mías, tal como son las de mis hermanos. Manos grandes, manos chicas, manos suaves, manos tiesas, manos de trabajador y de amante. Estas manos en un tiempo levantaron espadas, conquistaron tu ascendencia, se lavaron en la sangre de tu madre, sembraron las raíces de tu fruta, construyeron en concreto el camino del futuro. Estas manos que defendieron la laguna son las que también rebataron y mandaron el tesoro sobre el mar a llegar a las manos de la reina, manos de pecado que forzaron un tal ídolo, manos ignorantes que pensaron en salvar. Estas manos son de tus abuelos, cuyo montaron caballo su una noche fría y pelearon a la muerte por su tierra. Manos delgadas que excavaron cementerios, encontraron las mismas manos apretando cruces, revelaron piedras montadas en pirámides gigantes, pintaron murales en su propia sangre y deletriaron poesía con la misma tinta. Estas manos pintadas de gris en tiempos de oro son manos mascaradas y santificadas, lucharon con el demonio azul mientras sostenían el sombrero del rey. Apostaron la vida en cinco brajas con pistolas frescas listas a perder. Manos de resorte en cantina se inflaron, de risa enamorando a todos con flores y café, delicadas manos que sedujeron al hombre, bailaron sobre el cuerpo y susurraron el llanto del cucurruco-cubo en su pecho caliente. Lindas manos que apagaron la luz azotaron la puerta dejando lo borracho, llorando impotente. Manos de machista en soledad se amarraron al micrófono y cantaron con el anje negro de su mente. Estas manos no tienen dueño único, son la imagen del espejo de tus padres. Fueron besuqueadas por él, atrapadas por ella. Manos de voluntad, manos de valiente, manos de ama, manos de paciente. Estas manos pequeñas de bebé cada vez que te veo siguen creciendo, cada vez apretando mi dedo con la fuerza, y cada vez recuerda que todas estas manos también son tuyas. On September, this September 26th, it'll be seven years since the mass kidnapping of the students, of the 43 students in Iguala Guerrero. This is for them. On the way to Tlatelorco, para los 43 de Yotzinapa, 43 children did not run into the Guerrero Woods and turn to smoke through Nahuatl Mystics. It was a ghostly Cortes who commanded conquistadores and indigenous allies to starve and to murder enough bodies to stack his temples, to leave a reek of death that has never left the surface of the land. It was obligadas en Policia Federal that fired onto the plaza where Cotemoc suffered the loss of the Mexica soul to future compatriots who then piled students and neighbors on flatbeds dressed to look like garbage trucks. It was a Juarez that stood by as the dogs defaced the Quetzales, leaving their flightless, bloody feathers full of ash and a bag by the river. This was written last year, September, 2020 during the fires. Huddled in a room at 100 feet above the concrete flatland of Oakland, past the 1930 single pane windows are residential apartment rooftops. 100 yards away is a line of pines, oaks and maybe a redwood that covers an amoeba-shaped lake at its feet. The algae's putrid odor penetrates the mix of native and immigrant trees and emptiness follows for half a mile till it meets a row of mid-rise condos from the 20s, 70s and early odds which eagerly sprout in an art deco bloom contrasting the gray metal highrises that reflect and flank them to the west. Smoke climbs over the century old trees, lays a composite blanket over the lake, drowning voices suffocate beneath rubber-state troopers stomping youthful flesh, glass and plastic break, the wake of trees burns, a spiral history echoes until the kinetics of society cease. After days when it is quiet again, when the crickets sing the repetition, my eyes open but the haze remains, the sky is orange and the smell of ash enters, dipping its fingers in food and water, drinking the hope I was preserving in a jar for this year's frigid winter. Cosmos, let's read my last piece. One, somewhere dark enough away, I can look upon the constellations once observed by the ancestors of my ancestors, creation myths and the drama of the gods weaved into a dotted meteorological map. But here, the city's night sky tells me a story of loneliness, so much noise the heavens disappear too. A lonely comet travels the road at 3 a.m., precious carbon cargo passing by Los Angeles, down the five to the 10, then the 110, up the 101, briefly the 170, back to the Sacramento five, never to make a sacrament, instead to veer to the oaks and thumb of St. Francis, wheels spinning on its elliptical journey. Three, all of life we know travels alone, making no impact on the direction or even the planet's rotation. How little we are, offspring of the sun, creatures of the crust, germs of the earth. Four, you who seek to hold on to your possession, look upon the vastness of the ocean and see only your reflection. You who can only think in terms of self, dive deep into the nucleus of your cell and note the same DNA found everywhere else. Five, we are made of dust from cosmic explosions, we are consequences of entropy, we are hydrogen tempered by oxygen, we are the evolution of nucleic acids, we are made in the image of the earth, we are its living dynamic crust, we are recipients of growing brains, we are data collectors of knowledge, we are manipulators of chaos, we are builders of information systems, we are standing before the external brain, we are between this page and the next, we are every single living being connected in this way. Six, I am not the wick nor the wax, I am the candle, a flame atop my head, flickering in and out of consciousness day after day, such a short period, melting toward my feet. Seven, even in immobility, we travel the galaxy, accompanied by the stars. Thank you everyone. That was amazing. And I'm a cynical person. So that's a Jesus Hector. Just conned him on here. We have a what? A handheld? A handheld, oh. You know me so well. Well, what I realize is if I, by the way, I have a bad habit of wandering around while I read my poetry, but this, just to be safe, I'll try and stay here. You got, anyone got a leash? They can just click me to the floor there. But yeah, mi gente, that was, that's the Floricanto Familia reading today. And we want to give a special shout out to the heart of the Floricanto Familia, our art director, Amanda Yala, who's sitting right here in her beauty, filming the whole thing for us. Yeah, it's live. And yeah, it's a, it's really beautiful being here with everybody and reading. And there's a bunch of other, there's more of us. There's a cat in the Yucatan, Fed, who can never remember anything, and he's brilliant. There's also Jose Hector Cadenas, who's doing a doctoral study somewhere in Iowa or some god-awful place. But there's many of us, and hopefully they're in spirit here with us too. Fed, I love you. Don't worry about the absent-minded thing. I can't remember anything. Yeah. So I'm gonna read, I'm gonna take this out if that's all right. And is that all right? Y'all okay with that? This is my book of release on Black Frater this year, Baby Ashelots and Old Bochos, which I will not be reading from tonight. But it is available over there for purchase. And for those of you that don't know, it was published, and I'm very proud of this. So I always mention it, Black Frater Press, Beautiful Press in Oakland, started this year by Ali Jones, and the one on only Tongue, Eisen Martin. It was created to elevate black and brown voices, and it's an amazing press. They're releasing the work, A QR Hand, our beloved poet who left us in December. Norman Zalaya's new book is coming out on there too, the Nikas Squeaklet from the Mission. So tap in with them, please, check them out. And if you buy any of the books tonight, a half of the money is gonna go to the Floricanto, so you're doing a good thing, you know. And you're buying my book. So yeah, so I grew up in La Mision, and I lived there for years, but I'm part of what's become known now as the Mission diaspora, right? Folks that called La Mision home at one point, but now were pushed out for whatever reason. But we still come back to it, it's still our pueblo. You know, and I come back to San Francisco every day, I work at the bookstore, City Lights. So I come here back, you know, I'm back all the time. Honestly, these days, I go to visit San Francisco, and the security guard almost doesn't let me in. When I finally get in to see San Francisco, I hardly recognize San Francisco anymore. San Francisco is surrounded by tech pros doing metaphysical lines of cocaine on the table and kombucha enemas in the heavily mirrored bathroom in the clubs. San Francisco is lounging on the leather couch I can't afford to sit on without a credit check. San Francisco has Uber and lift skid marks all over his face. Really, really, really cheesy.com tribal tattoos on his arm. San Francisco has a new haircut. It takes up the whole block and is wearing a leather jacket that would never ever speak to me in public. San Francisco now modifies its Spotify for a foggy day and everyone has to listen. San Francisco puts on yoga street clothes that make him look like an androgynous superhero. Drinks a green, gigabyte smoothie or takes a deep protein vape hit before going outside to a kiosk where San Francisco will drink blue bottle coffee until their kidneys hurt. And as San Francisco is walking away, I yell, hey, San Francisco, you're acting like a real bendejo. You know that? Try and remember yourself. Try and remember yourself the way I remember you, San Francisco, because I remember San Francisco in the sweet and embarrassing Polaroid pictures that were taken by the ghosts of beatniks who can't spell and Barbary Coast smugglers who will never, ever text message you. I remember San Francisco in the layers of graffiti on the bathroom walls at Spex and Cafe Triesta and in the light bulbs that have burned out at the top of the Transamerica building. I remember San Francisco in the taillights and headlights of the low riders cruising la mission low and slow, lighting up the neighborhood like the candelas on an ofrenda. I remember San Francisco dancing with the beautiful brown drag queens at esta noche all night long. I remember San Francisco as I look at the stoop hieroglyphics in the film or left by the black family as they used to live there. You realize that the melancholia from the time that Billie Holiday sang strange fruit at the Flamingo Club is still stuck in a corner sidewalk cracked by the bus stop where the number 22 goes by. In front of where the Bothan Club used to be on Devisadero, the cacophonous growl of one of Archie Shep's tenor solos is smushed into the concrete under an ancient and smashed piece of bubble gum, man. I remember San Francisco. The time Harvey Milk made out with a Golden Gate Bridge in front of the Baghdad Cafe while drag queen angels whistled show tunes above them and leather daddies with tables by the window finished their large stack of strawberry pancakes, man. I remember San Francisco in the secret tunnels of Chinatown where so many of the Chinese still go when they get sick of the pinche turistas asking for firecrackers, numb chucks and opiated bubble gum, man. I remember San Francisco. The time San Francisco took LSD and turned the old army bunkers below the Golden Gate into an Aztec Temple movie set for an entire day and night, man. European and Japanese tourists took snapshots, posed for pictures with the natives and put their torn out sacrifice hearts back in their chests as they returned to their hotel rooms to write postcards to their friends and families telling them how cool and beautiful this city really is. I remember San Francisco when I reached for my wallet and realized that I was pickpocketed by the memory of Jack Black. I remember San Francisco when Diego Rivera would wander its hilly streets as the colores for his pan American unity fresco spilled out of his pants pockets while Frida suddenly waited back at the hotel room ordering room service missing Mexico and eyeballing the Huedos outside the windows with their faces like dough. I remember San Francisco in the narrow 3 a.m. doorways where the echoes of Bob Kaufman's poems still linger like the smell of smoke. I remember San Francisco as I walked through the tenderloin stopping at Pill Hill to try and score some oversized cartoon Guelumes grin in front of the spot where Compton's cafeteria used to be remembering the look of disbelief that bean chick cop had right before the cup of coffee was tossed in his face. I remember San Francisco the time Oscar Zeta Acosta pissed on the steps of St. Anthony's church and projectile vomited ectoplasm and warm Cerveza as he walked towards Market Street to catch a bus to La Mission where he'd spend the rest of the night playing his old clarinet in front of his SRO on Valencia Street after he'd finish he'd look up at the San Francisco sky pass out and dream drunk brown buffalo dreams where all the other brown buffaloes around they would be screaming que viva la raza cabrones. I remember San Francisco on Sunday morning and the holy music from St. John Coltrane's church would drift up and down to Visadero Street cleansing everything like a new rain. I remember San Francisco on Sunday morning at Christmas. Can I get you, I didn't want to stop that because I get run over. Oh shit. But I do want our people watching and our recording to hear you. Oh, is this what needs to be, I see. This is a man who still uses typewriter and post-its, I'm sorry. I didn't realize, oh, there's my voice. Okay. Hello. Hello. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not doing here. Typewriters and typewriters and post-its y'all. That's how we roll. Okay. I'm back. Wow. And I feel so revitalized. Hey, let's give a special shout out to KPFA who's also here recording this event. Shit, shit. Okay. For those of you that don't know 2021 is the 500 year anniversary of the invasion by the Spanish empire of the Mexica city of Tenochtitlan. So this year on top of being a pinche pandemic year, just like last one, it's also a year where us as Mexicas, as Latinx folks think about this, you know? We're still here after 500 years of colonization, pandemicos, plagues, murders. Yeah. And I think in the context of those times and I'll never forget, man, when they were making the Florentine Codex when Bernardo de Saruín was getting the natives to write this thing for him, there was a plague. One of many that the Spaniards created wiped out 90% of the population, man. 90% of us. So we're still here. And when this one passes, we'll still be here. And whenever they do to us, we'll still be here. My point being, I'm gonna read a poem now and I'm gonna dedicate it to my Mexica family after still being here. And I don't know how we do it, but we're still here. ¿Qué somos, mi gente? ¿Qué somos? You can hear me now, right? Shit. Pues somos Starlight that was left in the glove box of Xochipiles y LOL Camino. Somos nopales espinas that pricked our tata abuela's and the sueños of living here in those United States. Somos scarred childhood cruzando la frontera momentos that are tattooed forever on el Cucui's left arm. Somos huesos that a jaguar in el cielo is gnawing on right now. Somos a conejo that you can see quite clearly on Cuyushuakui when you look up at the night sky. ¿Qué somos, mi gente? Somos the torn out paginas of a history book that no one was gonna read. Somos the candelas still burning on the corner of Frenda's back in our old neighborhood. Somos the smell of burnt tortillas. Somos frijoles that have been soaking in a bowl of water since the beginning of this quinto sol. Somos africano features hidden behind Zavatista bigotes. Somos africano rhythms played on a vaquitas jabón. ¿Qué somos, mi gente? Somos the broken taillights of a dot com conquistador's car as he drives over shell mounds on his way to the next century's chingadera. Somos the first drops of divina sangre de huitzli o pochli shed in defense of his mamá. Somos the sweet taste of nopal syrup and amaranth cakes which the colonizers mistook for the taste of human flesh and blood. ¿Qué somos, mi gente? Somos a frontera folktale. About the time el diablo came to the pachanga dressed in the skin of a handsome blue-eyed white man with the feet of a chicken. Somos the black and red scribbles inside of Yejita's dream that make up his life, that Miklante Kutli is watching like a sitcom rerun right now. Somos a white cowboy hat on a Tigres del Norte Album cover. Man, ¿qué somos, mi gente? Somos the smell of death, quietly emanating off the papayas in front of the mercados around 16th Street. Somos the smoke that fills Chavela Vargas' voice every time she sings her canciones. Somos a 500-year-old joy ride in a blue-eyed demigod stole in ránfla with the bones of the 1,000 conquistadors who we killed on la noche triste in the trunk, man. Somos Cortez is missing finger that you will never, ever find. Somos ancestors who are children. Somos the severed parts of our own goddesses. Somos gods who leave their body parts behind to help create time. ¿Qué somos, mi gente? Somos the wrinkles of our abuelita's skin. Somos the flayed skin of Shepitoltec. Somos Acha Ya Katz Palace rising up in this day and age by the Mexican city concrete. Somos la Cualiqua buried and brought back up again. Somos wooden prayers set under serpent-skirt night skies. Somos Spanish surnames and the last known European address of Doña Maliz, ¿Qué somos, mi gente? Somos words that white America can pronounce. Somos our own mispronunciations. Somos our own mistranslation. Somos our own migration. Somos our own bullet holes. Somos our own milagros. Somos the last box of brown Ben Davis pants buried in the terremoto earthquake after the big one finally hits San Pancho, ¿Qué somos, mi gente? Somos constellations. They can only be seen if you hold the sky up to a smoking mirror. Somos mariposas de humo that disappears. They flutter across that pinche border. Somos North American pesadillas stuffed inside a Donald Trump piñata with no dulces, no manzanitas, no $20 bill put in there by my drunk Tio Tony, just pesadillas. Somos a pile of huesos out on la frontera that no one is ever going to find. Somos brown-skinned children in American cages left to die. Somos brown-skinned children in American cages left to die. Somos spanglish-speaking Sempasuchils watered with agua that comes from ni de aquí ni de allá. And somehow we keep growing. ¿Qué somos, mi gente? ¿Qué somos? OK. So why are we putting a condom on this mic if it's not being used? I have a tech question. I need it explained to me very quickly. Oh, it's KPFF course, of course. That makes sense. Gracias, everyone. So for those of you that haven't maybe tuned in late or wandered in here, this has been a reading by the San Francisco Floricanto Literary Committee. Gracias, mi gente. We've put on a literary festival in the Mission, a homegrown festival that's been going on since the 70s. So please support. Do we have a link to donate to? Do we have one of those? Is that something we have? Well, anyway, so if you're able to donate somehow, find us, donate. We're one of these Rascuacha groups that often, yeah. So anyway, the next festival is coming up next year, and it's going to be beautiful. And it's also, you know, familia, real talk for a minute. This city has never been richer ever than it is now. And it's also never experienced the leaving of art that it has. I mean, the artists are leaving here in droves. They're like Kukaraches taking off when the fucking boat is sinking. Little Kukaracha lifeboats. But you know, the importance of keeping a festival that's created by the people that are from here for these neighborhoods can't be overstated. So yeah, please tap in with the Floricanto folks and help us any way you can. We do this broken style, bit by bit, poca-poquito Rascuacha style. So please tap in with us. Go to our Instagram page. Go to our Facebook page. Hit us up individually, whatever you wanna do. Just tap in with us and help support this amazing festival. And also, I do wanna say mil gracias to the SF Public Library for making us feel so welcome and so supported. The Public Library is putting on an amazing Latinx Heritage Month series of events, this Mahoma Viva. Like Alejandro mentioned earlier, the great Jaime Cortez is in conversation with Hushino in conversation with? He's in conversation with someone. But anyway, Gordo is an amazing book and it just came out and it's beautiful. Juliana de Gallo Lopera, Fiebra Tropical, Chronicles of the Mission, you know, down there, the whole thing in the 70s. It's an amazing book as well. So tap in with SF Public Library and support them in any way you can. And I wanna say gracias to the Michael and Alejandro Anisa, Almenstra Lopez for making this feel so welcome here. It's so funny sometimes when brown folks come into spaces and don't feel welcome, but this has not been the case here at all. It's been familiar from the beginning. So gracias, y'all, so much. I wanna, yeah, please give it up to the library real quick. I wanna end with one short poem that was written by one of the first, sorry, I did that again. I did it again. Gracias, Mollica, for laughing and helping me catch that. Sorry, KPFA, I love you. Sometimes I have to move the microphone away. Yeah, the Floricanto has featured so many amazing poets, both international and from here. And the first Floricanto, which was started back in the 70s, one of the first performers was the great queer Chicano poet, Francisco X. Ilarcron. So I'd like to end with a small poem from him to honor the ancestors of our poetic lineage. This poem's called Jaguar. Some say I'm now almost extinct in this park, but the people who say this don't know. That by smelling the orchids and the trees, they're sensing the fragrance of my chops. That by hearing the rumbling of the waterfalls, they're listening to my ancestors' great roar. That by observing the constellations of the night sky, they're gazing at the star spots on my fur. That I am and will always will be the wild, untamed, living spirit of this jungle. Gracias, familia. Aquí estamos y no los vamos. A really successful in-person program for us. I'm proud that it's all of us. But I also heard, like, thanks to the public library. Thanks for having us, is what Ricardo said. I wanted to flip that a little bit or actually flip it completely. I think Dr. Lopez is working hard. Our city librarian is working hard. We're working hard to make this your space or our space. So I don't want us in the future to, and I really appreciate at the end that you said you felt welcome here. And that's our goal. And we want this to belong to us and to belong to you. And I want us next time to think of this as a place for us, not just this one here, but our libraries, all of our institutions in the city, but definitely our libraries are ours. So thank you. We do thank you for promoting what we're doing this month. Thank you for all being here. And for our poets, goodness gracious, like talking about the people leaving the city, I'm like your words, I don't know why you all get into poetry and do it, but just know that those words inspire us. They make being here and walking through here and living here just more vivid and gives words to our experiences. So thank you very much. I appreciate all of you and you guys, you all are incredible, thank you. Don't forget, buy books. Some of the money goes to Floricanto if you can. Yes, buy books, get our flyers. Thank you and please enjoy the library. Josiah, did you bring enough books today?