 Hello and welcome everyone. Thanks for coming to this month's poem jam. I'm John Smolley, a librarian here at the library. Work on the third floor. While we're waiting for a few more folks to arrive, I want to take a moment to acknowledge our community and to tell you about just a couple of our upcoming programs. On behalf of the public library, we wish to welcome you to the unceded ancestral homeland of the Ramatush Eloni, who are the original inhabitants of this San Francisco peninsula. As the indigenous stewards of this land, in accordance with their traditions, the Ramatush Eloni have never ceded, lost, nor forgotten their responsibilities as the caretakers of this place. We as guests who reside in their traditional territory recognize that we benefit from living and working on their traditional home world. We wish to pay our respects by acknowledging the ancestors, elders, and relatives of the Ramatush Eloni and by affirming their sovereign rights as First Peoples. If you like poetry, you might want to come back this Sunday because on Sunday we have authors from Nomadic Press reading in this very room at one p.m. Those authors will be celebrating food. That's one of the topics for this month. And also on Sunday, August 21st, in the auditorium just across the way, we'll be hosting a panel discussion on the past, present, and future of food cooperatives in the San Francisco Bay Area. And the authors will be discussing how cooperatives have been an integral part of the food and justice movements and workplace democracy in the San Francisco Bay Area since at least the 1960s. So you can learn about these programs by picking up one of our newsletters on the table there. There's also some flyers and coffee and cookies for you, where you can visit our webpage at sfpl.org. So that's all I have to say as regards announcements. I want to turn the microphone over to our host, Kim Shuck. Please give a warm welcome to Kim Shuck. Food cooperatives, huh? My parents were part of the food conspiracy in the 60s here. One of the great joys of being from this place is that you accidentally end up knowing a lot of history. Tonight's reading happened because things have been really not going well in terms of personal autonomy in this country just of late. Not for a long time, but it's gotten kind of weird or just of late. So I asked a group of women whose work definitely reflects intention around personal bodily autonomy. And then I looked at the list and went, we're gonna need to do another one of these, so we're gonna have a second one next month because we may do it again, again, because I think there's a lot to be said about this and I think we need to keep talking about it until things shift again. It's really important. Our first reader is Tanish Kaur, who is remarkable. The first time I ever heard her read, I was blown away by both the tone of her reading, but the tone of the poem. And I hope that you will also feel that way. Since then, I've invited her to a lot of things and I will continue to do that because I have the greatest respect for her as a writer and a human. So if you could welcome to this microphone, Tanish Kaur. It is an honor to be here, thank you, Kim. I guess I'll just get started with my first... I feel like I should just do a trigger warning for a whole bunch of things. Abuse and a female genital mutilation. Flying out of Chandigarh, pigeons fly through the airport. I've been thinking about getting a bird, whether indoors it's free, whether keeping a pet inside is ethical, holding a tender heart for dogs, though. A land once colonized is still colonized. This one changed by a Germanic lingua franca. Sound familiar? Toppled by a pyramid scheme of colorism, fair flesh absence of color cast the darkest shadow over lifelong servants. Anglo servitude with Indians at the tippy top, palpable hierarchy severs with precise intonation. My family traded one caste system, poor dirt floors for another, cars, two-story walls, wedged between black and whiteness, some of us comfy, others willing, wanting to fight for ourselves, others. Our human blood runs pure, but our tree a willow, weeping wetwood, bacteria, toxic to newer, wood suffering, wounded from environmental stress, tears like rain to drain our tree from bull rot, but the rest of the tree preserved, as if the sap being forgotten, the tree's effort to compartmentalize the wounds, passing it down to its young, shriveled with tears suffering from what our parents journey to forget. Parents, some toxic to their offspring, 15 cousins, older ones, toxic poison to younger ones. I'm near the outer surface, my weeping pores from pores, carrying their pain in mine, to some of us, it's a wood shelf, horizontal, uniform, 90 degree angles, levels sectioned off by sex, fastened with screws, older screws, seen as stocky to hold more weight, but no, we are living. Our wood still in the ground, we bleed and weep, what our elders have forgotten. Our only comfort is the air, the world. We release our hurt as we bleed our hearts. We learn we are free, escape branching out our leaves and wings, secrets will kill a family. The last thing I say to my auntie after asking her whether she knew they cut my clitoris when I was small and received no response. Colonized people can also colonize people their own. Imperialism hides the mess inside. One land for another only heals if you do. Thank you. This next one is a little tough too. It's called From Earth Grows Life. If you plant a seed in grainy dirt and give it water humbly, you'll smell damp earth, fresh soil and realize it was always thirsty, craving creation, longing to nurture growth. Tiny green leaves poke proudly through to see the light and sigh the solution. Look what we did, isn't life beautiful? The empty house I raised myself in had five, then four, then five bodies, masquerading as a family, fresh coat of glued dollar bills lining the outside to this day. Like paper flesh inside walls blank, as with some of the bodies occupying its space. My body was my dad's pleasure for years and when I could have my memories or rather when he thought I was old enough to have them, he threw my body against the walls sometimes. Strangled my neck sometimes, kept me from boys and called it protection instead of what it really was. Jealousy. Money is all they have now. They tell me I'll never have money if it isn't theirs. I'll never be anything without them. I won't succeed without them. They walk with contradicting tongues instead of feet like the rest of us. Thirsty for power they buy at my expense. Feet in fire, concave where conviction should be. I'm only safe if I believe the opposite. They eat my self-esteem, self-worth like street dogs at mealtime. I ravage my confidence at every opportunity they take advantage, but I won't let them anymore. A house like that grooms you not to share what is dear to you. Not to try, it won't change anything. To trust no one, not even yourself, to listen attentive to tone, to survive, to give your heart to people who only take, people who give don't exist. It's amazing how you learn to fear your own mind, to avoid fearing those you share a house with. How you learn to rely on your gold heart to carry you through life, but the universe shows you. That little green leafy sprout, what trying and caring can do. Birds who cheer you on as you walk back to yourself. To a love who won't let you settle outside yourself, who lets you see, feel, own your energetic power, your healing divinity that God was there the whole time, that you should never fear those who are not God fearing and you sit whole for the first time inside yourself. Surrounded by love, the one and only thing the universe offers, the singular thing they groomed you not to notice and you think and ask and feel with calm curiosity and curious humility, what's next? Thank you. I did want to honor native women who have been stolen with this poem if it's all right. It's called The Crows Have a Legacy Two. Stories stranded in time, spanning centuries, holding our ears to them is justice. There's a brown-skinned angel on the crescent moon tonight in foreign clothes made by Asian children's hands, her hands beating, fringe hanging from her black hair, dangling down through the clouds, her voice, a violent breeze crashing through our ears, freeing her soul, perched upon the light. They act like my mother's flesh was free. They think themselves God and stole me until I could go nowhere but heaven. I sing you my story. All our stories tell it, don't lose it, or our dignity or yours remember us always in light. Shame them for what they refuse to see in themselves. The darkest, searing spirits who don't ever deserve this land, she tells me, there's a place for those who take and take, you won't find them on the moon. The crows have a legacy too. A multitude of native women in solitude, stolen, no ransom, limp laws and action defends, the sacred soul screaming a bellowing breeze of betrayal without charge or trial. The crows grow beaks for men like you who murder behind silence, who sit strapped between it and sweet voices. The crows, they peck at your palms for your own sins. They find your eyes delicious worms. If it's all right, I've got three shorter ones. They're a little bit lighter in tone, sort of, karmic liberation. You are not my God. I am my own artist and if I ever see your hands again, I'll cut them with a glance before they believe I'm your masterpiece, not a kintsuki vase. You, the artist, shattering my softest parts, breaking, gluing pieces with your own whim again and again. I don't go near people anymore. I am also not so fragile. A flame blooming. My timeless roots thick, unbreakable. But I sprouted, unplanted and unburied, umbilical cord and placenta, unable to find Earth after a Mayan birth if I were Mayan. I floated across the planet, trying to find a place to plot and preen. My roots found light in land, soaked in sanguine tragedy. Light overcome shadow. Sometimes shadows feathers everything until all you can do is set flame to gasoline, letting all the unseen hoarded burdens burn. You destruct, deconstruct, just to see again, but then your pupils bloom at the beauty of color. And my last one is conviction of delicate wings. Bird humming. Tunes a heart. Fresh strawberry harmonies flashing, fiercely slava like lightness, like air the uterus thirsts for autonomy surrender. This the anatomy of love where insides touch in time and twine skin to skin, silk to silk. Kashmiri dashiki skillfully arching a loom in transcendence, in improvisation, who forbids us, who defies this? Dare try, you blasphemous things and watch the conviction of delicate wings. Thank you so much, thank you Kim. I did warn you. I've seen some of the process of some of those coming out and I'm really, it takes might to get some of that out. Thank you for sharing those. Her next reader, I'm trying to make this sound different. She's so delightful. She's sunshine in human form. And I want you to understand that I mean that to be a powerful thing. I'm not talking about frivolous sunshine, I'm talking serious, like the power of the sun. Jennifer Barone asked me one of the best questions I was asked in the first week that I was poet laureate of San Francisco, which was, are you gonna put more women on stage? And I said, that's not my intention. But it is gonna look that way. And I have no problem with it looking that way. Please welcome to this microphone, Jennifer Barone. And clearly a need for it to look that way. Thank you, Kim and everybody, friends and beautiful faces that are here. While he fears rejection, she fears aggression. While he fears humiliation, she fears violence. While he fears how he'll look to his friends, she fears her reputation on the internet. While he fears losing control of his privilege, she fears losing control of her own body. While he fears that others are out there, she feels the man standing close to her, too close. While he fears her breaking his heart, she fears him breaking her arm. While he fears going to a bad neighborhood, she fears going out at night. While he fears people from across borders, she fears the men in the Congress and the courts. While he fears bombs from another country, she fears the police will not protect her. Go ahead, Kim, get angry. Don't listen to the Dalai Lama. Get core of the earth mad, gets pit-steaming pissed, churning and ready to explode, breaking pavement into flaming shards. Have no regrets for carnage or aftermath. Spiew forth your venom, rip feathers from pillowcases, tear up your favorite shirt, break all the mirrors, smash the glasses and plates like a Greek restaurant, blow up, deface your happy face, quit your job and run off to foreign lands, set your journals on fire, tear up your old pictures, let laundry rod in its corners, run in a circle like a dog, pluck your hairs one by tedious one, bang your fists against the wall till they're sore and bleeding, like a child who didn't get a toy, hold your breath till your eyes bulge and your skin burns and you come close to dying or you pass out and fall asleep from exhaustion. Help yourself, but do it 100% and then laugh. Laugh till your gut's about to burst and your face hurts. Laugh at everyone until the movie theater sends an usher for your removal till the sheer ridiculousness of the scene makes everyone laugh at you or with you or fear your health and then go straight back to normal as if nothing ever happened because this now, this is all you can do. Everyone wants to make an industry of me. Part by part they pull apart my anatomy to my foot. They say I need to clip it, file it, scrub it, reflexology, pedicure it, buff it, polish it, paraffin wax it, leap press on now it, decalice it, bind it, boot it, squeeze it into stiletto heels until I can walk on nails or stilts and cannot run away from the. From my head down to my toes, everyone says I have to be different than I am. To my leg I need to shave it, moisturize it, devane it, laser it, knead it, smooth it, decellulite it, wax it, bronze it, tanz it, exfoliate it, tone it, lift it, salt glow it, wrap it up and slim it down. To my ass they become totally confused. It's either too curvy or too big and they make pants that don't fit it or it's too small and they say I need to pop it out, tie it up, G string it so it peeks out of my jeans. To my belly it seems I need to lipo suck it, corset it, control top, spandex it, girdle it, pilates, yoga lattes, roba size it, zero size it, juice it, cleanse it, starve it, binge it, purge it, crunch it, tighten it, crack my ribs and washboard it, basically suck it in. From my toes to my head I'm never okay just the way I am. To my breasts they say I need to fluff them up, poke them out, squeeze them together, underwire, double de-cup them, strapless, backless lace them, silicon pad them, racing back, flatten them, push them straight up to my chin. From my head down to my toes everyone says I have to be someone else other than who I am. To my face they say I microdome abrasion, mud mask, oxygen spray, fruit acid peel it, collagen serum it, pinch it, clean the pores, Botox needle it, face lift it, powder and eye shadow, bronze it, colorize it, tweeze it, mascara curl it, eyeliner it, gloss it, pucker it up, see nothing, hear nothing, say nothing. To my hair I need to cut it, crop it, style it, blow dry it, weave it, dye it, curling iron it, crimp it, straighten it, roller-prim it, frizz it, tease it, brush it, flat iron it, pull it up on a bad hair day. And for the peace de resistance from the creme de la creme. I need to shave it, bikini wax it, Brazilian airplane strip it, do you should plug it up, pat it down, make it smell like roses. And after this assault, in some courtroom on Capitol Hill, a bunch of men will sit on a panel and say I need to chastity belt it and throw away the key. For this part of me there are lots of things I cannot, in some cases by law, do with it. I can't birth control pill it, sponge it, diaphragm it, cervical shield it, and if accidents or rape against my wills should occur I'm not allowed to decide whether or not I wanna grow a baby inside of it. I should feel ashamed of it, I shouldn't look at it, touch it, I should never feel pleasure from it. And in some places it does not legally belong to me, even though it's the most intimate part of my body in the very center of me. From my toes to my head, whether I cover up or I strip down, I will not win this war, not today from my head to my toes, I am just fine as I am, leave me alone. Every part of my body, every part of my body, every part of my body belongs to me. DNA, would it name 14 generations of longing in my bones, multi-dimensional hands that reach across space, hairs that stand on end? I smell coffee grinds percolating in the basement. Would it draw intertwining strands, a seven layer cookie of longing carrying desire I don't understand? Fibonacci sequence of bones in my hands that sign language from across the street. Would they decode the imprint of songs sung from balconies, smell of anise, licorice and fennel? Explain the wild look in my eyes, the pattern of ache that grows around my belly, reveal the origin of sorrows that make a home in their heart chambers thumping, beating like a fist against a wooden table, clapping hands that keep time, molecules underfoot, the track roots into depths, thermal waters that weep from eyes that have seen too much, pumping steam propels, ships across the Atlantic, its foghorn announces its passage through ancient waters of red, carving a spiral path into the ocean, cobalt blue like you've never seen, winding song of my blood. Del ovo, which means the egg or from the egg. She holds the egg, she is the egg. Her body soil for the egg creates the egg. She who builds, who moves, who dances. Bird woman, when women were sirens. Who swam the Bay of Santa Lucia, whose eyes grant third eye vision to pass between thresholds. Her feathered egg hidden inside castel del ovo where the poet wandered her sacred shores. The egg suspended in a glass amphora over the heads of philosophers and ghosts. The primordial seed that swings from the Shafters. Her cage song that keeps the city safe from volcanic eruptions. The egg rolls softly over skin in the healer's hands. The pure and powerful egg with its delicate shell lifting the eye from you, lifting your fears, lifting your heaviness. In the garden of delight the egg protected by warm feathers of the mother that cokes you to fruition. Hen feathers sprinkle holy water, dipped in oil bless the brow. Feathers that float in the blue wear sirens sing. The great song of their longing. Listen, listen to this song. Wash upon the shore in waves that beat against the tide. Recordi, remember where you come from. Remember who you come from. Wounded healer, my wounds are my power. I collect them like feathers. Recreate wings I've forgotten to wear. Retrace my grandmother's hand, turning lace into sacred geometry. Hidden messages turning shells into women that sing. The voice of sirens still echo in the wall of sea caves when you're still enough to listen. I'm learning a language no one speaks anymore. Sometimes I expose my wounds in daylight, amaze there's still a residue of ecstasy in my bones with as much potency as sorrow, holistic in its medicine. Suddenly feathers are coming to me. I think they might have always been here. I was unable to see them for a time. They show up on my doorstep at sundown, emerge from my pillow when I sleep, turn up in my pocket. Joy is also my power when I find bluebird feathers. Don't mistake my laughter for weakness, my ability to bear my scar as an opportunity to write me away. Ecstasy is my power because it seems the thing you wanna shame me for, the thing you wanna damper in me, ecstasy is my birthright. My ability to feel such love should be as exalted as my wounds. So I pick up the feather and I listen and it sings. It sings from the balcony of my mind. It sings right through my heart with all of its grief, with all of its love, with all of its wisdom, it sings. Thank you. Madly love our next reader. I really do. And one of my favorite moments and my whole poetry career was one where E.K. Keith, Cassandra Dallett, M.K. and I were standing against a wall listening to other people read and somebody afterwards told me that was terrifying. And I said, what, the reading? And they said, no, the four of you standing there at the back of the room. It just looked like trouble. And I was like, yeah, good trouble. Please welcome to this microphone M.K. Chavez. Hi everyone. It's nice to see faces in the top of faces. Thank you, Ingrid. It's been a while since I've seen Ingrid. It's also been a while, I mean, I've seen you in a little box, but it's wonderful to see you live. I am gonna read from what I'm now calling my pandemic book. So I watched over 400 horror films during the beginning of the pandemic because it was the pandemic and you could do things like that. And while I watched those films, I thought about race and identity and our bodies and how we try to figure out where we fit in all of this, especially when we have been othered. Night. So I'm actually gonna read in the order that the book begins. I was a mixed race zombie. I wasn't born a relentless creature of resurrection. If I could, I would eat from the top of my head. I would feed the seventh chakra that mysterious lotus a thousand petals and 20 layers of 50 more petals. Once, I was so invisible that I weighed my way into existence. I consumed the bigot cashier at Joanne Fabrics, the man at Whole Foods who wanted to cut me in line. I ate the Wolf Whistler and his wife. Then I said, I am pure consciousness because my lotus eat your lotus. My lotus eats fear. My lotus lingers at the gateway of history, loving versus Virginia, liminal skin, one drop or more. My brother named me Dark Magic. My uncle sang brown sugar at me. Children of the emerging paradigm, who will pick you for their team? My lotus has eaten every inquiry into mixed race. My lotus misdahisa, my lotus in Spanglish, my lotus in Selvinoir, my lotus in Afrohyphenate, my lotus eating the binary and then belching. Lotus of mystery, ethnic and not enough boxes. Lotus of the multiracial multiverse. The most terrifying part of the movie is never what you think. What if zombies are just misunderstood? A little ode to zombies. In the book, I have dioramas and I also have film reviews, a little bit for everyone. So this is the first diorama in the book, diorama number one. My black grandfather devoured both of us in my father's maw, internalized hatred. He never spoke of his side of the family. And with the dioramas, there's a little description at the bottom of each page of a diorama. So the description on this page is, in 1933, General Hernandez Martinez responded enthusiastically to the rise of fascism in Europe and wrote immigration limitation into law, prohibiting the entrance of Africans, Asians, Arabs, Gypsies into El Salvador. El Salvador actually has a really great history of doing that. They also, at a different time, decided that they didn't, you know, I mean, they weren't gonna let black people in and Gypsies in and Arabs and everybody that they didn't want there. Because I think there might have been a belief that they could be white. It's really hard sometimes for folks. So they decided the way to make that real was to just remove the box that you can check to say that you're black or indigenous. Good job. Surprisingly, it didn't achieve that. Anyway, Camera Eye. Camera Eye is the name that I've given to the film reviews. Camera Eye, Day of the Animals, main characters, Eagle, Cougar, Michael and Sarah playing a native guide, Leslie Nielsen playing a jerk who takes off his shirt in the rain, millions of aerosol cans, the ozone layer, Beverly Hills mother who prefers a civilized environment, rattlesnakes, jokes around the campfire about being scalped, owls, a professor, the army, rats, abandoned tents, German shepherds and wolves, a news reporter lady, the weather, a football player, the campfire itself, conclusion, bear eats man, shake of a tail feather. This is a revenge story. So the book is actually a hybrid collection and it has some short stories in it, so I'm gonna read you a very short story. Horse Woman or How La Si Guanava Became My Bedtime Story. La Si Guanava is a folk story, Salvadorian, kind of, I think a more common reference would be La Llorona from Mexico, so it's Salvadorian version. The Girl. La Niña Chila was not allowed to play with her brothers, nor did they want her near them. They called her horse eyes and threw rocks at her. The girl was typical at birth. She was born dark, which had calmed the boys because they knew their father would still favor them. As expected, upon looking at her, the father said, disappointing, do not let her go into the sun. And then, within hours of being born, the dark baby had stood up and soon was walking, and within hours running, the father could not help himself. She is exceptional, despite her darkness. The boys could not bear to look at her for she ran with abandon, with joy, and their hatred grew. The boys. On a sweltering day, the seventh year of the girl's human life, the girl fell and broke her face. It happened like this. Late at night in their bedroom, they had hatched a plan. Let's rid ourselves of horse eyes, one boy said. They had come to find the girl's stare unbearable, the weight of it, especially on hot days, when the sun beat down on them, making them sweat in the impossible stickiness of the dirt from the courtyard where they played clunk, clinging to their Spanish skins. The boys, born a year each apart, could have been Salvadorian nesting dolls, each a little bigger than the other, each one closer to following in their father's military. We will finally put her in her place, one of the brothers said, and they shared a collective breath and smiled into the darkness, the event. The boys went to the courtyard as planned. Nina Chila was waiting. She was always there waiting, her eyes shining with hope. They called to her and said, come to the edge of the stairs and we will throw the ball to you. If you catch it, you can join the game, and if you don't, we'll never let you play. The curl did not hesitate. She followed their instruction and left the safety of her balcony. Nina Chila stood at the top of the stairs and the boys with their best thought, the boy with his best arm aimed at her and prepared to throw the hardest pitch he'd ever thrown. The sun was unforgiving and there was an electricity of determination in the air. The boys seemed to vibrate with it. The ball flew at once fast, but also slow as if it was searing itself into memory forever. Contact with the knee sent reverberations through the girl's body and the sound of splintering bone filled the courtyard. One of the girl's legs gave way and then the other. Her fall was graceful, quiet, like she had been taught to be. It might have seemed that she was floating if it had not been for the sound that emanated from her body as she hit and broke the tiles of each step. Later, the story that the family told about Nina Chila's disappearance was simple. A terrible accident. The girl's clumsiness. Walked herself into the middle of a boy's game. There was nothing that could be done. She died. The girl became like a ghost, little more than a tale. But when her name was mentioned aloud, tiny hairs on the nape of necks would stand on end. Sometimes there would be an ache felt by the querent. What really happened involved the shattering of the lesser wing of the cheekbone, the iris, the cornea and pupil swimming in a milky eye. On the day it happened, moments went by before the boys woke from their hypnotic state. They had watched the falling and heard the delicate sounds of breaking. They considered their next step standing over her body while she lay still and blood wet. Nina Chila had not made a sound. She would not make a sound, even as she healed. Her father had come to her bedside one single time, looked at her and said, it's a shame once you had had something to offer. The apparition. By the time her family delivered her to the convent, Nina Chila had learned to cover the right side of her face with her long black hair. She had two faces, the horror and what had been. At the convent she followed the nuns like a benign apparition to prayers then to a meal in a corner by herself and each night to a dark room far from where anyone was likely to visit and still. A new gardener arrived and claimed her. No one was more surprised than she. After all her brothers had said, no one will ever love you now. You are a monster. A month later she was married in a ceremony that included nuns and a priest. She had not and would never see her family again. Except for three separate occasions in the future when she would see her brothers stumbling out of a bar late at night. The wedding night. The gardener pulled back Nina Chila's hair. He said, I accept you in your brokenness. I will love you despite your sin. And then he took off his clothes. Nina Chila pulled away and the gardener's rage which he carried so close to the surface of his being exploded into a million small knives that all entered her at once. When he was done he said, I know women like you and he was gone. Never to be seen again. Nina Chila never spoke of that night. Nine months later she gave birth to a baby girl. The baby had both cheekbones. No milky eye. Pestilence. Something else arrived on the day the girl was born. Not understood but determined. There were only whispers. If you had evil in your heart. If you were out late at night. If you approached a beautiful woman. A woman with long black hair. If you approached a woman with evil intent. The time became a town of men. A handful of women who could no longer speak. It was believed they followed a beautiful woman to the river. One with long black hair. Only one side of her face showing. By the time they realized who she was. It was too late. Nina Chila told this bedtime story to many children. And some of them were never seen again. All right, I think I'm going to finish up with two more. Do you have time for three or just two? Short? Shorties? Okay. I don't want to leave you with camera eye. This is for my witches in the audience. You know who you are. You will not be alone. You may think it's easy to burn a witch. But she returns having learned the lesson. Operating subservience. Behind the pastoral idyllic chains and chainsaws. Emotional cannibalism. Conclusion. There's no getting away from it. The diorama to the drinking father. Once upon a time he was known as the town drunk. The town being all Salvadorian people in San Francisco. They named him after his favorite bar, Rondaia. A Spanish word meaning group of serenaders. They nicknamed the father's daughter Rondaita. Salvadorians have a way of sweetening words. Once the father did not come home for two days. His daughter found him at Hunt's Donuts. Not far from the bar. Once on a watery night the father wandered through broken glass streets until he came upon a woman with horse eyes and a broken face. But he had nothing for her. He had long ago lost his voice. And the little subject line at the bottom is Rondaia closed in 2016. The mission local San Francisco's Mission District newspaper reported that Rondaia had a rich history that included being an unofficial hangout for gay Latinos in the 1940s when it first opened. And this is my final poem. So all of you will want to know how to analyze a horror film after this. I know you're going to go home and watch horror films, right? How to analyze a horror film. Consider what is repetitious in the trope. There is a reason for every sound. If we stripped the monster bear and asked the body, what is it like to be normal? The reason for every sound is a call for retribution. And the body becomes an instrument. For every monster carries a story. In every horror film there is a time for retribution. The bereaved bend backwards and crawl downstairs. For every monster is a story behind the story, under the skin, in the grave, and beneath the blinding white light. The bereaved are ravenous and dispassionate. The belly of the stove is hot enough to expose the skin, an uncradled grave, hidden at night. At the funeral every object speaks. The belly of the monster is ready, hot and ready to be understood. Thank you. As I was listening to everybody read, I was noticing how every single person was looking for consent to continue. I want you to take that with you. Many poets don't. Story follows story as it has since the various beginnings. Old responsibilities run clear, trouble the wind over things some thought had slipped away, more curled and healing in places where the world changes, where the story pulls deep. Story, filtered through sand and hillside, pine and cedar, the dreaming wishes of the original beings, even those that have gone. And I am trying to avoid the word sacred, so I will say connected. We are reminded the community is more than close cousins connected. Maybe enough to say these things we believe but hold close away from the not too distant histories, away from the ways we can't protect each other. Right now. Hold them close and safe. We are the living dreams of those who have come before. Old responsibilities running clear with the new ones. We living dreams are connected. Not less than our ancestors, than the stories tended sometimes whispered in illegal languages, stories that teach us not all of the endings can be tragic, no matter what the preliminary series say. No matter that the story came through a frightened school child gone and still waiting to be found. A stolen woman whose part of the story sings from the edges, a combat vet who may still be rebuilding their story. It's a brave thing that we're all here now. Connected. A moment to recognize what it is to be part of the solution. Stubborn. Beautiful. And yes, that was always part of the story. But no less heartbreaking. No less a positive choice. I have a handful of river pebbles connected. The volunteer tobacco plant out back near the fence line. Connected. Old responsibilities. Reminders that we are here to take care of each other. We mechanisms of water and plant, hillside and human. We are here to take care. And on this coast they found small yellow flowers declared extinct. But there they were under the trees. It's not the gold people came to hunt here. But it is the gold that we found. Harvested by rare bees connected. These stories, I may be among the least who tend them. And even if we are working in different places in the same direction, we are connected. We can decide old responsibilities that we carry into more brave story. Doug is always waiting for me to get up here and read a title and then sit down. It hasn't happened yet. But I'm trying to do a real set and still let everybody leave early. This is called, can you read the shattered glass? Filled strip of poem, hand smelling of poem oil and cordite cough raven down. Emergency cloud formations bookmark between handwritten spells. Can you read the shattered glass? A soothsayers meditation in these parts in these days. You might be randomly stopped and searched. Palms and heart and surgical eye swabbed for poem residue. And they will find it there. It's clear as any other fortune, floating in blue liquid. Can you read the shattered glass? The shattered social contract, souvenir skin kept for best because the parasite is canny. Because we're canny. Shoulders pressed against the peers of the overpass, letting the poem vibrations pass through our flesh. I've been incredibly disappointed with her elected leaders forever. So many of the other days said to me, we were talking about another part of the world. And she said, well, what you don't understand is what it's like to live in colonized territory. For the three of you in the room who don't know, I am Native American. We live in colonized territory and bite me. One of the questions I get a lot because I do beadwork is do you tan your own hides? And you know, there's not a whole lot of deer roaming the streets of San Francisco. So I wrote this poem. Hunting in the downtown. You know how the deer are on Market Street with their stoplight eyes. Picking their way down old runoff paths past the disappearing relocated indigenous women. The ravens are here to sing us visible, drumming on their collection of upended pots and industrial buckets. Don't you tell me how we've changed? We were right there near the department store, near the burial site singing to the ancestors. This is not an abstract gesture. It's not a schoolroom exercise. There are predators here. And the maps of safe passage change every day. And the wind comes up in the afternoon. Don't you tell me how we've changed? The roots of this hill have learned what to call us just about. Our clothes are collected for the festival, our family members taken to who knows where. You might just sit down and listen for a change. I'm not part of your curriculum. We're a whole other thing. Light reflecting off miles of glass. How many feet deep was it? Can you hear the water like shattered windows piled just like them, just there? Were the tall buildings lean like stealing? Paul Corman Roberts tells me that good poets edit and I really don't. He also tells me that we don't have favorite poems and I do. I'm going to read you one of my favorite poems and then I'm going to read you one more and then we can all eat a cookie and go home. This is called Bridges and Crossroads. WPA Bridge over the Neosho. I stood on it in full flood with my dad, the water just kissing the underside of the boards. The river moans shivering up my legs. It stood until a flood looked out the footings. They replaced it. But when I dreamed the Neosho, the old bridge is there. They took the zinc out until they hit the daylight of Third Street. You could see the crack in the pavement. It looked like another pothole and there was sunlight in the mine. Sunlight just there with the grim scowl of Jack and the dull ache of lead. Those cotton mouths know some songs too. They know some fish songs. And once crossing Tar Creek Bridge, a grandma snake got hit by a pickup. In her last breaths we drove up on her there like a burning library. Her songs falling away in curls like smoke prayers near the water. She looked me in the heart and whispered just the one secret. More to the point this last poem. And I will just say, there's a real necessity for us to all be visible right now because there's some heavy work to do. It is that moment. Calculate the equation for consent on the freeway retaining walls and tattoo it on their skin. We've made our bodies from the idea of heroes and now we must live in them. Write poems to the idea of them. The idea of them. What time did I spend laboring my children from idea, from body, from ideology into a new story cycle of error and judgment? Yes. I stand as self, unstable and political in all the useless ways choosing which anger to feed long waning days in this time of ceremony in this moment of betrayal. Yes. There are things that I would risk to spit narrow definitions of woman rewritten and baleful a dangerous spell into the teeth of abusers and enablers because in that room, on that side of the debate, you were one or the other. As we find a way to heal and we will, my beloveds, I promise you yes, we will aspiring jailers and torturers. We will find a way to heal. Thank you so much. And now back into my host thing. I didn't book myself, by the way. One of our readers couldn't make it so I ended up having to read. So thank you for your indulgence. Can we have another round of applause for our amazing features tonight? Tanisha Kaur, Jen Boron, M.K. Chavez. I love you guys. And I can't imagine better people to make a new world with. Have a great month. We'll be back doing the very same topic next time.