 Welcome everyone to this evening's iteration of Kim Shuck's poem jam. Thank you all for coming While we're waiting for one or two more people to arrive. I wish to acknowledge our community Maybe mention a couple upcoming events So on behalf of the San Francisco public library We wish to welcome you to the unceded ancestral homeland of the Romitr Sholoni who are the original inhabitants of the San Francisco Peninsula as the indigenous stewards of this place and in accordance with their traditions the Romitr Sholoni have never ceded lost Nor forgotten their responsibilities as caretakers of this place as Guests we who reside in their traditional territory recognize that we benefit from living and working on their homeland We wish to pay our respects to the ancestors elders and relatives of the Romitr Sholoni community and to affirm their sovereign rights as first peoples September we have lots of events coming up Viva all sorts of things you to learn about our events. You can pick up one of our Newsletters on the table over there or there's also flyers also coffee and cookies. Please help yourself to whatever you see and I think that ends my announcements. I'm going to turn the microphone over to our gracious host Kim Shuck Please give a warm welcome to Kim Shuck Suppose I should really be welcoming you since I practically live here Um, we have a lot of cool things coming up with poem jam as well Next month The inimitable Paul Corman Roberts will be Taking the role of me because I'm touring a new book called noodle rant tangent, which is a Collection of essays kind of not it's not new for me to write essays. It's new for me to publish essays, so We'll see how that goes So I'm going to be away for a month and then when we come back we have a lot of exciting things To share so that's pretty exciting Our first reader tonight is ek Keith Who is not just a brilliant poet, but also one of my very best friends and since I've stopped Dragging her into things when people cancel Um It's terrible to have people that you know you can count on that way and then you sort of abuse them a bit So I've left her alone for a little while and it's going to be really exciting to see what she has to say about our tonight's topic Which is body autonomy. I know we've done one other end of this topic. I may do more of them in the new year It does seem a little urgent to discuss some of that So for now if you could please welcome ek Keith to this microphone I think I'm gonna go with this one So hey everybody It's nice to see That's well now. I'm gonna have to do something extra special Which is put my earring back on And because of proprio perception, I know where my ear is without looking in a mirror I know it's pretty amazing. This is like one of these feats of Normal now if I can only just get it clipped there. Yes. Here we go. Yeah All right party tricks by poets And if I'm super lucky the lens won't pop out of my dollar store readers So I am Excited to be here Thank you for asking me to be here Kim and thank you everybody from San Francisco Public Library We appreciate all of the resources that you offer to our Information community here in San Francisco and that's like everybody just in case you didn't know so bodily autonomy is a Topic at hand and one of the things that I'd like to just point out is that as a group of people Aside from, you know women in the United States Not having bodily autonomy currently also in the United States Another group of people who don't have bodily autonomy is children So think about that for a moment. I was and So this little poetry journey that I will take you on begins in Texas where I was born and It's called Lilias yoga and me PBS mid 1970s At Linda Sullivan's school of dance. We wore black leotards with pink tights Tap shoes had to be black with low heels ballet shoes Had to be pink with one strap of pink elastic across the instep no ribbons I thought these rules were absolute Then Lilias came on TV After mr. Rogers and Sesame Street and the electric company a daily ritual She invited me to do yoga with her on TV I marveled at her magenta leotard with matching tights So I stretched my mind and I stood on one foot Lilias played music like I'd never heard before and I liked slow motion poses with some I even knew from dance school and I decided when I was big enough to have my own way I Would wear a leotard With matching tights and I wondered if they came in blue So as we continue this lifelong journey towards bodily Autonomy and possibly away from it as well, which is challenging. This is called body shame My mother put me on a diet at age 10 Because my dance teacher said I was too tall and too big all ready to ever be a Ballerina and not done growing yet. So no more toe shoes The waiting room of our quack pediatrician should have had a cross-stitched sampler that said Munchausen by proxy mother's club My mother invoked the dance teacher's Authority when she asked the doctor if she could put me on a diet of a thousand calories a day He said That should be okay. I Started to hate eggs and meat breakfast One boiled egg no condiments one orange one children's chewable Multivitamin lunch One hamburger patty no condiments no lettuce no tomato no cheese no bread No, have it your way just one hamburger patty plain one orange supper same as lunch Apparently this is a thousand calories This went on long enough that my teacher Learned from my mother of the doctor's approval and my mother enlisted her assistance in monitoring me at lunch Imagine my mother's satisfaction of buying me a smaller dress than I could fit into a Reward she said for when you lose the weight I'm not sure how long this went on but Starvation diets work and my mother zipped me into that dress just the once diet over I ate some candy and lunch and supper same as the rest of the family of All my mother's tortures Dance class was the one I minded least because twice a week it was me in control of me a Brief history of a rebellious body in motion At age 14 I had ten years of formal dance training committed to muscle memory with no lingering notions of being a ballerina I Quit after making the high school softball team and Everyone said it is such a shame And I said why don't you take a dance class My family was worried because in spite of all the ballet. I wasn't turning out very feminine My mother said dance class would help me get a rich husband It did not Dance class did make me a good dancer I've collected decades of dance moves catalogued in muscle memory with lingering smiles for parties and dance clubs Wedding receptions not mine of course political protests and demonstrations bars and street festivals But mostly I like to let my body move in the living room To whatever comes on the radio And now we're just gonna bring it right up to 2022 This piece is called and this is my piece that I will leave you with this evening It's called June 24th 2022 Except for jaywalking. I haven't committed any crimes But I woke up on a regular Friday morning without the rights that I had when I went to bed and My rights weren't removed because of the systemic and racial oppressions of the carceral state no Five villainous judges proved that the pen is mighty when guided by the narrow personal views of Powerful people who write the law of the land to inflict the problems of the past on to the future and The deaths to come from the lack of health care for 21st century women will be more Medieval than death by sword and I'm feeling especially lucky to wake up in California because state Governments now get to decide what I can do with my vagina and I have a Passport full of empty pages empty promises of United States Citizenship as my personhood focuses and fades from state to state But gas is too expensive for road tripping this summer from California to Texas and the women in my family say They don't feel oppressed yet But they'll know when it comes and they're worried I Haven't committed any crimes So I could fill my passport pages with stamps from countries where I have more rights than the state where I was born Because my rights to my body in the country where I was born are gone and That's the real crime Thanks, everybody. I'm glad to be here. Thanks for listening. Thank you, Kim so I need to explain a thing to y'all which is that because One of our readers was Is a is a health care worker She seems to have come down with a really horrible case of COVID so we're just gonna take a moment and hope that she feels better soon and I don't know what's up with the other reader. It may have been a miscommunication or something, but I do not see her here so Weirdly for this reading our last reader Is Sarah Biel? Sarah Biel is part of One of the people who runs Colossus Press Has put together a really incredible Latest book, which is Colossus Freedom about the carceral state, which is available here tonight and I have known Sarah as an editor and Person who assembles books for a long time because we met assembling one but also she is a remarkable poet and Does not read half enough and I am delighted to have her here tonight, Sarah Biel Thank You Kim. Just fix this. I'm also really excited to read here tonight because the first poem I'm gonna read is Actually the first poem in my book that is coming out in February from finishing line press And I think a lot of my writing sort of clusters under the theme of bodily autonomy and particularly around the idea that we have a right to feel safe in our bodies and Make choices for our bodies and feel safe in our choices So this first piece is called prescribed burn It began in a mix of soil and salt a fire set in my stillness I don't like to think about the windows shattered the poison. I pushed downstream Most of me came home came awake lips bruised in a crush of fear Skulls soar from collisions and silent sobs My hair nodded and torn a messy convenience in his furious grip I handle to twist and drag me stumbling dumb shuffled in disbelief from block to block The next morning miraculously alone. I slid into the stained bus seat Tears tucked in the tire spin breathed fully for the first time in far too long My bitter tongue swollen with unnamed crimes dates and times Deceptions and dares lines drawn and crossed left choking on the curb My blood gathered against my skin Strained all the places his fingers gripped Blooming badges of dishonor. I wrenched free Slipped his mother's ring off my cold finger couldn't watch as it bounced in the roadside gravel Sometimes a door needs to slam before it can close Sometimes they burn fields so something new might grow the next poem Is called I want to give him a chance Her voice is thin scrapes and rolls a dry leaf across the sidewalk My fingers grip the phone heart a bird in my throat. He said he loves me She says I want to give him a chance Her thoughts a murmuration hope and fear lost together My fingers grip the phone heart a bird in my throat the sun ducks behind the behind the cover of the sinking city He said he loves me her voice a startled hover against gravity Quiet rolls down the window a few drops of rain vane the dust From the cover of the city the sun sinks her teeth into the core of the day Just in case she says I have pictures. I could put him away, but I won't The bruise rolls down her throat a flu drops of blood settle under her skin Today the moon is a whiter version of herself floats like a scar on the horizon Just in case I say you could have a plan some place to go But she won't our silence sits on the wire fingers fisted small offerings are all we can give Today she floats a fainter version of herself guilt scarlet on her horizon Regret is so familiar. It crumbles fits along the curve of her shoulders Our silences sit on the wire fingers fisted small offerings are all they can give a Wide-eyed breathless fledgling hops awkwardly across the concrete. I Want to give him a chance. She said I could put him away, but I won't our words weave into the hush of rain Car sounds and someone yelling on the crowded concrete the fledgling has been knocked into the swollen gutter He says he loves me her breath stiff her words pulled from bitten lips like a wishbone in the rain Someone is still yelling the hush of the cars loses our words I think I'll give him a chance Somewhere a heart grips a bird twists its throat He loves me she says breath stiff a wish bitten from a shard of bone Her voice is thin Scrapes and rolls a dry leaf across the sidewalk. He says he loves me. I want to give him a chance I think one of the things There's so many terrible things that have come out of the end of row But one of the things that I think is interesting and possibly good is that I feel like people are now talking about their family members Who have needed to end pregnancies and I think there's a lot of power in story telling and a lot of power to create change and so this next poem is sort of about that and About talking to each other telling The winter sunset seeps crimson behind the mountains She cups her secret into my ear a match to my mother's grief and anger pressed fingers to palm a string of stories laundry on a line wavering a Tentative sovereignty born in blood each story has a name Rita Marguerite Amy Joan My mother tells me her story Surrounded by snow with the early darkness of a northern night our words hang on the phone line cold and stiff It should be easier now. I want to see you afterwards She told of driving with friends Hollywood to Tijuana a girls weekend summer of 63 Smoking cigarettes with the top-down sun and wind a flask to pass around the car Someone knew someone who had a doctor's name. It would be alright Later in a dirty motel room. She cramped so hard. She passed out Vomiting and bleeding through gray sheets. She tried not to cry too loud Listen to her friends dance in the courtyard bar outside the window their laughter Bleeding into the scratchy radio music her fear already scarring curling into silence. I Listened to the squeaky crunch of tires on the snowy parking lot Dawn blinks out with the street lights Almost strangers our eyes roam the windshield Looking for instructions in the ice left on the wipers Our teeth and hands hold us carefully in our own skins We are tangled Breathless in our unintended bonding awkward in the intimacy of this accident Cloudy breath floats away from us in these strained moments time spreads things at its edges There's no guilt at the sun doing He stamps his feet to keep warm even in the orbit of his honor. I live these hours alone in The room I pull away from him, but let him keep my hand Palm upturned a place to put his thumb away to feel effective I try not to squeeze too hard in the clenching suck of being wrung out That afternoon and through this whole slow husk of winter We wandered in a pantomime of coupled gestures Some secrets don't age they calcify Breathe quietly hands folded lay claim with flat little smiles my secret Natural as a stretch mark lingers mirrored in the eyes of older ladies Blooms with this telling precarious and commonplace Rose colored mornings after storm-filled nights Very when I was about 22. I had a job working in Colorado going door-to-door doing public education and getting funds for a Non-profit that was supporting choice in the state of Colorado right after I think it was the Webster decision that let States have some more control over how and when people terminated pregnancies and In that job I heard so many people's stories of relatives who had died as a result of terminating pregnancies before It was legal and safe and I always remembered all of the stories so My next poem is titled turning to salt He won't give you an answer. He wants you to hold his words on your tongue Make them a bed Sew them into your hem their weight sluggish Suffocation at the end of every step. He tells you don't look a backwards glance is sins first twinge Accrescent ripe for waxing. He tells you the past doesn't matter But it's the wave that brought you to this precarious morning a wave that has already started to forget the warm sun of your skin He doesn't know your soft organs already venture out your feral heart has run barefoot When the tangled air a promise kissed behind your ear your body matches the sea salt for salt Wakes when the moon rolls over in bed to spill a tearful greeting in this wretched dawn Why not choose the world? It's here pressed under your nails clings to you at every opportunity Familiarity deep as breath you won't be disappointed look close There's innocence in the spread of pale roots Possibility in the far flung sigh of a train as it rushes to the heart of a summer night This is where you've always been going Words like rain. It's okay to wonder. It's okay to slip along to slide your hand in Gravities and grin as you fall This next poem is a really new one and it there's some interesting Thing about it, which I'd love like your thoughts on The person that this poem is written about uses they them pronouns and So I have used they them pronouns in this poem and They are a single person Still They fall This cold world turns their body to rock They break apart on the way down Hand throat rib cage their voice fades in and out a Numb welcome a sinking sensation like the skipping silence at the end of a record a Crackle in the absence of song They haven't remembered Their heart is not nailed to the floor Not quite carry in not just yet This is titled next time Clouds crouch warring cats between bunched mountains the road shadow slick Climbs in switches dives and sways dances lonely to the trucks exhausted growl My thoughts stretch a clothesline hung with my mistakes His anger pricks the tender cusp of my fear He says he knows me maybe better than I do I Stare past the mud-spattered windows watch the feckled green and constant grays the torn sky too cold for rain I find surprises in the bleak predictability of the late November highway Half a naked bed frame caught mid tumble clings to the rumpelt slope We pass a gas station roof caved in Baron vines twist reach out broken windows caress the trial twilight. I Curl against the door Cradle a vicious itch regret that refuses the satisfaction of my nails I cool my bruised eye on the frozen window let my nose run onto my sleeves Reach for the grounding scent of laundry soap the gentle flannel still holds the chemical mockery of spring My landslide mind scrambles for that perfume the ghost of an anonymous laundromat a hideaway from his cigarettes and day after Beerswet With the groan of gears something small inside me rattles loose It makes a broken sound into the silence. I Force my breath even write promises in the windows condensation next time There will be a next time Next time this road curves back into a shadow My heart contracts His apology will spit glistening and slide with other fast food containers on the resting truck truck floor Next time the occasional moon shrugs looks at our watch and sighs One of the things I think about when I think about body autonomy is that all of these things whether or not to Have a child well who to marry who to love who to create family with are all so important that they have to be chosen because they're too hard and require some sacrifice and so much Sort of working things out and giving up the things that you want sometimes that you have to choose this and So thinking about that I decided to read this poem that I wrote right after I had my oldest daughter So this is a pretty old poem since she's almost 30. So But I wrote this thinking about her the morning after she was born So being for my daughter Iris We are steeped in quiet Folded in sheets and blankets and you small bean So complete in your sleep Your pink hat pulled to meet your dining downy eyebrows Breathe in the even light of dawn Your first morning is outside Today the world is broken open and every cell sings So for my last poem it I'm gonna have some help from some of my friends So and we haven't gotten to practice this much, but we're gonna go for it It's called unborn Unwanted unlucky unwed unknotted unscripted unsaid Unburdened unbidden unbrushed unburied unbroken unjust Unfolded and finished unmade Unlawful unprilanced unpaid Unblemished unaltered unarmed unbuckled unbridled unharmed Unbounded unbuttoned undone unspoken unwoken and one Uncommon and stable and dressed Uncertain and quiet and rest Unwelcome and civil unsaid Unlikely uncommon unread Unending unable untold Unopened unsettled unsold Unscripted unrivaled unwon Unbitten unblemished unborn Unseemly unkind uncoiled Untitled unsigned unspoiled Thank you both. Ah wonderful Ali Jones is one of my favorite poets and I've had the great privilege of working with her in a number of different Context both as co-readers as somebody who's booked her to read as somebody who's helped been part of a collaboration to curate things But my very favorite way to interact with Ali is to listen to her read So if you could please welcome Ali Jones to this microphone Either one. Okay. This one is looking kind of short Y'all can hear me, okay, okay, we're gonna go with this and I have a place for my papers so it works Awesome. Thank you, Kim. I'm so excited to be here This subject of body autonomy I really thought about it in a lot of different ways and my pieces don't directly speak to body in the way that of like cellular memory, but it looks at sense memory and for me that in the body is really important, especially Thinking about what we know what we don't know. I don't want to remember my life before mermaids. I Was raised by saltwater queens blessed by magical beings of mythic proportions daughters of yemeya and gumbo Those who remind me of the beautiful resilience that lives within us Coiled crowns adorned with cowry goddesses who maintain the grace of a gazelle with the ever-changing tides messy grand my mermaid queens flowing crashing rising my grandma Genevieve cayenne pepper royalty Celestial matriarch soft yet steady as a metronome in the kitchen with a laugh that could brighten any dim room Unafraid of what is to come because her love was founded in certainty Her setbacks created the beginning of her greatest comebacks Flowing through the roughest currents and remaining strong flowing crashing rising Mother Teresa Calming like rosemary and gentle as gardenia's earth warrior who taught me to respect and protect all forms of life Holding space for her softness and her offspring unconditionally magical Conjuring potions that transform the flu into a slight sniffle or inventing the perfect bedtime story She grew in the midst of adversity Never allowing fear or judgment to stop her pursuit Crashing against every judgment with expectations and with determination flowing crashing rising me see run my mermaid queens Cousins that always remind me that I could do anything Sisters that challenge me to seek softness in times of pain and trauma to look at myself in a mirror untarnished by self-loathing my aquatic angels Who kept me sane when all I thought I could ever be was crazy Loving with our hearts wide open Guided by our gut feelings and our star signs River quiet. I'm on a Gary Dreamers believers lovers and warriors Rising above black holes of doubt insecurities and fear flowing crashing rising This next piece So this this next piece is honor is an honor of my grandma Genevieve she passed away in 2019 and I actually wrote this piece seven days before she passed and The last few years of her life one she was Paralyzed on her left side and two she was experiencing Alzheimer's and so by time she passed she actually forgotten who most of us were Let me talk to my girl L.A. L.A. T and a two-jure That we're proud of my girl I'm proud of my V my girl me I'm grateful for my grandma Genevieve a daughter of Louisiana sharecroppers No middle name several last names five daughters one in heaven Lost in a trance ready to dance the best cook in our family She was young wild and free before it was a thing to be Dedicated to her family laughing uncontrollably Cleaning houses every day 40 years just to make a way for us No limits to her love She's you energy from above so below we were able to grow flow go She taught me to appreciate everything Never bought cars or bling garden plots and recipes The very best of me She taught me how to love feel and heal There will never be another quite like my mother's mother There will never be enough words don't do the long to describe her magnanimous presence The essence of love and light We will be all right Even on the darkest day. She found a way. I was there the day her life changed All of her plans to rearrange on the bedroom floor Let me put in my girl L a L a T it a tujo I'll be proud of my girl So this next piece is um in English and Spanish that last one is English and French I realized when I do this I like to tell people so they're not like where did we just go? Want you to go on the trip with me? El alcohol is in my corazón None of you done or a son Seen Duda y Miedo yo solo que espero Como agua soy tranquila y poderosa Lo que pienso viene aquí Mis sueños pass in in front of me Con un voz más fuerte que algún rito Gracias y amor a mis corazones aquí en la tierra en la cielo The rainbow of my heart waves of gratitude a Journey within and without releasing every single fear and doubt Not allowing that my anxious energy to shut my flow. This is the art Of letting go Of who I've been or had to be My soul is being set free Letting me know this place is home free to play and laugh and roam Rejoicing at the colors converging from light to dark Once I know I create the situation. I'll defy every spatial limitation Sending love and light to all the dark places filling my heart with familiar faces. I am bountiful. I am beautiful. I Am more than enough. I have more than enough. I Am more than enough as It is written show it shall be I know you may have a watch over me She is the mother of the water and I'm the child of the sea the strongest currents will not surpass me Flowing with every obstacle in my path. I know that pain and struggle will not last Seen Duda y Miedo yo soy lo que espero Thank you So I do a lot of pieces like around grief and how I was processing grief and I think about how grief manifests in the body And how we don't let it manifest in the body sometimes how we just keep going and this piece was in Response to a lot of a lot of grief a lot of folks close to me that we're passing and I didn't really have the words for it but the page did and Delhi be When a sparrow cries a soul flies silently in the greenest pastures over warm rays beaming Hummingbird stands still an observance in reverence for the stars who no longer burn with a light that never fades Generational grief in my bones Hope that phrase dismembered memory Unspoken knowing in my hair we say so much more shouting wild vision blurred The simulations tilting the matrix shifting Artifacts shrill of sacrifice cloudy countenance Regret creeps up your eardrum steady and resounding white noise tingles straight to the temporal lobe I hope you dance and Sing Les chansons de joie et amour profonde pas du souci pas des larmes Rien que une surie calume Just like a tuba bien, même si vous savez pas comment Thank you And this is my last piece And it is called black girl soldier this piece. I wrote in honor of Black women going through a silent struggle that folks don't always talk about of depression of PTSD of traumas that we'll never know And really honoring that and holding space for that our first general was underground Railroads can compare to the depths of her mind on a mission with a vision precision in the darkest cave Covered by branches Branches isolated by shame no matter where we go Up-rooted black bodies We continue to hide how we feel inside Not equal not well What is being? The blood that drops my heart that stops beating Emotions and strength from this black vessel gasping for air craving help Someone to care anyone to see that I'm not invincible Sold and conditioned Hanging on by a noose with no room to break loose from the labels you didn't ask for Martyr complex Struggling to catch your breath under waters of expectation bury your pain to survive They can't relate dissociate Nuclear fractures familial disasters armed with silence Surrounded by never ending violence Haven't we had enough? Faking like we're fine struggling and pride Told to hide our wounds inside Self-inflicted crimes the deepest roots Admiral abolitionist writer Wells of information filled her books on a crusade for justice Fighting to resist before a balled-up fist truth of liberation Asphyxiation We are the seeds from strange fruit Lemon lemon trees in the summer breeze Hemorrhaging from the root Under leaves of ignorance Our minds assassinated Our souls kidnapped Our bodies raped There is no escape from the scars this skin When can we begin? To heal To feel to just be free in The cage where birds wish to sing Harriet Ida Billy Nina Shape-shifting trauma into triumph Gardenia's boom across the street cope or heal Ultimately, it's all about how you deal The deepest roots hold the darkest storms. Thank you So, yeah, I think we're gonna return to the subject of body autonomy in the new year Got a couple of other themes, but I wanted to take this moment to thank the San Francisco Public Library and In a time when people are taking weapons into libraries and threatening damage and enacting damage and Interrupting story time with people if they don't agree with their Proper assessment of who they are and how they want to be in the world I am really grateful that San Francisco has a powerful public library I don't agree with every single thing that happens in these walls But I always agree with some of it and I'm grateful at this wealth of Information that is made available to me by this place So thank you John Thank you AV department. Thank you to all of our poets E.K. Keith Sarah Biel Ali Jones and also to Kiwi Sugiyoka who pitched in to read one of Sarah's pieces who is Is also the the Alameda poet laureate by the way, so that's not nothing and I won't be here next time, but I will see you in November when we'll be celebrating the release of a new book that I Did collaboratively with Lisa Ruth Elliott. I rarely take these moments to celebrate myself, but you know what? Maybe Sometimes that's okay. Thank you for being here with us. Bye. Bye