 Good evening, welcome everyone. Thank you for coming to tonight's edition of Poem Jam with our very special guest, California's Poe Laureate, Lee Herrick. I'm John Smolley, a librarian here at the main library in the humanities department on the third floor where we have poetry in 41 languages, thousands and thousands of volumes of poetry. I want to just take a moment to acknowledge our community and tell you about a couple of upcoming programs in April, National Poetry Month, and then I'm going to turn the microphone over to Kim Shuck, who is the coordinator and facilitator of the monthly Poem Jam series, second Thursday of each month. So on behalf of the San Francisco Public Library, we wish to welcome you to the unceded ancestral homeland of the Ramatish Huloni, who are the original inhabitants of the San Francisco Peninsula. As the indigenous stewards and in accordance with their traditions, the Ramatish 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 traditional homeland. We wish to pay our respects by acknowledging the ancestors, elders and relatives of the Ramatish community, and by affirming their sovereign rights as First Peoples. I just want to mention briefly that we do have a lot of poetry events next month, April, beginning with a online discussion of Alan Ginsburg's Howl on April 4th. We are having Kim Shuck's Poem Jam will be celebrating Poetry Flash, I believe it's their 50th anniversary. And there's many other wonderful events lecture on Blake's songs of innocence and of experience. Two South Asian poets, Sophia Naas and Monica Modi will be reading in the middle of the month. The month will end with a celebration of the Haydashbury Literary Journal. So flyers are all on the table there. There's also coffee and cookies, help yourself. There's also the limited edition 2024 poem jam pin. Help yourself to those. Without further ado, please give a warm welcome to Kim Shuck. I am ridiculously delighted about tonight. I'm really looking forward to hearing everybody read and since the response to my question about whether people wanted, were interested in going first when there was the echoing silence, I thought maybe I'd start. I've got a new book out called Pick a Garnet to Sleep In. And I'm gonna read something from that as soon as I figure out where my sticky note went. It's an exciting time and it's not all great right now in the world but there are some really hopeful things that have been happening. And one of them is that the West Berkeley shell mound has returned to the Leeshawn people. Just really exciting. I had semi-predicted in my own head that that was not gonna happen and I'm delighted to have been proven wrong. Was it 2 a.m. or July when I remembered the mouthful, the mouthful of yellow jackets, the thing I needed to learn about stubbornness, memory, the accusations somewhere between magic and alchemy and the dazzle drawn from one or another water, that the morals of a time must always be decanted from people who ruled rather than those who were stolen, that sidewalk crack, grime only flakes from one class of people and that a thousand songs of transformation of the gods of release, of escape are not proof that morals of a time are somehow one over rinsed poem, one essay, one speech worn once and passed on into transformation, transformation from gold into love, a thing we translate from some languages into the word survival, a word that will be translated again into unworthy, a word that will be used that way until one wordless healing song dressed in a garage sale shirt remembers what it used to mean and maybe someone sits at that table reminding you that there is more than one key to this house while one speech still debates the humanity of thousands. Thank you for the incredibly timid applause. I'm gonna encourage you to be loud tonight because we've got a lot of people who probably haven't read as much as I have and I'm gonna demonstrate good behavior although I'm kind of not demonstrating good behavior with a little talkie in between. I'm gonna read two poems and that's what I'm gonna ask people to do because more folks showed up, delightfully more folks showed up than I thought would. They didn't give us a day we pulled it from this resisting calendar. Grandma went back later wise and experienced with a digging stick to get the writ just in case. How do we make a day last a year? Now there's a miracle to recut into ceremony. I walk February, May, December afternoons with my pockets full of October days. One for each of 50 plus years. They whisper to my grandfather, to my father, my cousins. They whisper, yes, you were here, you are here and your story matters. I'd like to welcome to the microphone Yamini. So my first poem is called My Grandmother, the Storyteller and it is dedicated to my maternal grandmother. My grandmother used to tell me stories of the Cher and the Jua, the lion and the mouse. How size was never the measure of strength that cunning was how one survived. She'd lie down next to me and tell me, listen carefully, Meri Piatta. And I like to think that she knew what that story would mean to me someday. Storyteller, history keeper, a line of females passing down the right stories from one generation to another. Find your value in your mind, I can hear her. I can see her, Saraswati, goddess of knowledge and fertility in the same breath, watching thousands chant her name in prayers as if women weren't burnt alive on pyres lit for dead husbands. Call her no good witch, purposeless, too feeble to be anything other than a jewel, forgetting that knowledge and divinity and knowledge and fertility share the same divinity. Don't you see her? Don't you see the line of women as endless as Draupadi, sorry, when the Shasana tried disrobing her even in our holy books? Isn't it always the same damn story? Isn't it always the same damn reason? The only difference is that the gods punished her tormentor. Even while they ignore the hundreds who follow his example, how conveniently we forget the military leaders, the advisors, the politicians and guerrilla fighters, the women who managed to claw their way to the top bathed in blood, but what man writes a book in which a woman is his biggest nightmare? Find me a book in which a queen's achievements aren't her sons or her husbands, but we. But we storytellers will speak history on her tongue's remembrance for those who weren't deemed fit to write their own stories. The irony will be hidden in our fables that you tucked away and disguised revolutionaries working in code. So I like to think that she knew my grandmother, who looked at her granddaughter and saw someone terrified of her own skin, a scarred torrent. I like to think that she knew that I needed someone to remind me of my inherent divinity and to see past everything the world would otherwise tell me to be, remember our story. Remember our history. Remember who we have always been. I like to think that she saw the storyteller in me, her granddaughter across an ocean who doesn't call nearly as much as she should. She calls me and tells me, Hindi my bath good. Speak in your mother's tongue. And her mother's tongue speak in our tongues for all our tongues. Remember me before another culture takes you away and makes you forget your true history. So this is for you, my nani. Hamap ke baare me ney bul yeh. I am still your little storyteller. The second one, I'm going to give a bit of a warning beforehand, because this is an untested poem and is definitely going to raise a couple of eyebrows, but it needs to be said. So this one is called, I watched her eyes. I remember going to a party, where or when or why, never mind, but by the gods, my gown itched. I remember that first, my gown itched and I scratched and scratched, staring past polished windowpane's board and apathetic and so curious, utterly curious at how preening aunties dressed in their finest jewelry and saris looked straight ahead as if their heads were stuck, perhaps held firm to the, perhaps held firm to the poles up their asses, kept them drifting past the form huddled next to the streetlight. It shivered once and looked straight at me. I met her gaze. The first time I'd kept anyone's gaze, the first time she'd met anyone's gaze, surprised in her eyes at my blatant audacity, acknowledging her. She sat up straighter, kept her head bowed towards me and I wondered if she hated me. Perhaps I wished she hated me. I wish she'd come inside the banquet hall and made us look her in the eye, but my eyes never left hers. And despite her hunched shoulders, she never looked away from me. Harkertha was covered in dirt stains. There was so much food in the trash cans. I wondered if I imagined her eyes on me instead of them. I wondered if she knew the aunties starved themselves so they could look like her. I wanted to bring her inside. Maybe she'd sneer at them with me, but I knew she wouldn't. If anyone dropped even a scent in front of her, she'd recite blessings on them more heartfelt than any priest would she tell me about her if I asked. Would I be able to stomach listening to her? Perhaps I'm terrified to see the worst of humanity and through her eyes I know it would be me. It should be me, but she dreams of a life in which her soul was as rotted as ours. I wish she could have known me and my intentions before an auntie came up to me and started fawning over me. I was just so beautiful. I turned to her, I turned to look at her and I blushed as I thanked her willed sincerity into my eye struggle not to giggle as I noticed lipstick on her teeth. When she left I looked outside again and saw no one under the streetlight. As I began to itch all over again and I spent the rest of the night wishing for a better tailor. Thank you. I'm looking at the slide for today and it's gorgeous and I love Lee's work and we are definitely here to celebrate Lee but we're also here celebrating youth laureates and youth laureate runners up. So if you were wondering why that last set of poems was so incredible. We have youth laureates and youth laureates runners up in the room and they really do kick it out. And as an artisan myself and a former laureate I feel like it's really exciting to me that we have hands to pass our art form to safe hands, people who really get it and are really writing deep important stuff. Our next poet is Nidhika. Okay, this poem is called Reincarnation. My parents wanted me to be light years ahead of them. They immigrated from Tamil Nadu to California and now I am neither Indian nor American. I am neither cyanide nor aloe. I am cleansed by the turmeric powder dripping off elephants' trunks. I bleed blue like the flesh of an octopus and bruise like a ripe red apple hitting the ground. I haven't hit the ground yet. I soak in forest hudu and marigold rays. I do not have a name for my nuisance. They wanted me to be the sound of music chanting the Bhagavad Gita, our song of God. These hymns translated warriors to invincible souls. Am I supposed to follow? I can barely croak the words my mother's mother could sing, folk tales of Ganesha, the God of wisdom and Krishna, the God of compassion traded for my bare definition of acceptance. People assume who I am before I've learned who I want to be. I said our Turidars were too itchy when I was afraid to be seen in them. Bindi strategically fell off my forehead because I couldn't value my identity for the sacrifices my parents risked their lives for. I come from my parents' dreams and ambitions and I'm digging for gold in the sewers. I am a tiger and a city of wolves. My life counts as nine. My mothers, my fathers, their mothers and fathers until I can't go back anymore. I can't speak in our tongue, but I will always understand it. My name means leader. It means I will bury the hatchet and grow a mango tree in the middle of the street with no remorse. It means I will take risks out of love to spite my mother's fears. It means my intuition is a birthright and a curse. My name means I am not afraid of the dream. I am afraid to be nothing more than a dream. I don't sleep anymore. I am city lights and dirt roads. My gut tells me to wander until I can't see where I started, only where I'm going. The sky will map the story and the stars. My light is not any light. I haven't been discovered yet and I wonder if we are gods in the night. Supernovas on earth, radiating ambition from past lives, rich with transformations no one could ignore. Maybe we are too scared to forget where we come from. Our faces, our products of generations of hand-me-downs and we will be heard. Lux me, the goddess of good fortune rests on a lotus flower, transforming dreams into reality. Goddess Kali kills demons and destroys egos, overcoming the sins in our bodies that hold us back from divinity. Her tongue sticks out, taunting the heavens in a house with a sense of elegance. This time, death must come before creation. My parents wanted me to be light years ahead of them and I will reap what they have sowed to the bone. The sun will settle under my skin and I won't burn. I am their daughter, dynasties glowing in my bloodstream, chemical reactions brewing a new flesh. It smells sweeter than honey. I have something to prove, a passion incinerating the lies I once heard. I have a feeling we are the next folk tales that will be told and we will remold the clay that holds this place together, making our thrones. It is too soon to say, but we are at the beginning of the end, the big bang. The world is resting in the dips of our hands, palm lines forming a path unknown, I swear. I've never prayed like this before. Thank you. This next poem is called Sullen and then in parentheses about nothing in particular. And because I turned 18 recently, it's kind of about like a series of reflections I've had since then. Okay. Jaw tightened, body crushed between fear and floor. I lay awake, petrified about nothing in particular. Staring at the blank ceiling, I try to imagine, sketch like my mother taught me, light enough to erase without leaving a mark. Because when confiding that boy B used me, friend X said, he loved you in the way he knew how, but he didn't know how to, so it doesn't really count. And now I have to remind myself that love isn't something you can teach, only learn, but I've never been lost. When my father writes me a poem because I turned 18, I wonder how much forgiveness is worth because a poem is an action and he said, he learned from me. Friend Y told me I am too forgiving. And I took it like dagger to spine, insulted by my own bones because sometimes I want to be angrier as a form of self love, vertebra by vertebra. My mother tells me to never stop writing. And I snap back, why would I ever stop? And I noticed the tone of her voice shift into a dowry of sorrow. She stopped herself, but I suspect that the world did. I haven't seen her watercolor for years. I haven't seen my mother in years because I understand her now. And I talk about love as if it's unlikely and the future is unfolding paper origamis, creases leading to something short of a masterpiece, but I find that the action of pressing the folds down between my fingers suits me more than a light sketch. I would rather have paper cuts than eraser shavings munch the lines of reality and hopefulness because a poem is an action and I write more than the ceiling can accommodate. I'd rather be crushed by the marks of my words and be silenced by the weight. When boy A and B choose to never speak to me again, I pretend I did it first. Cosplay, Pluto, I pretend that my father held me and my mother didn't think less of me because maybe I am like them. And I write about nothing in particular because I'm not sure what I'm afraid of. Friend X says, I am a hopeless romantic. How cynical is it to want to be loved? Because a poem is an action and I have always been a body of water taking the shape of anything that can hold me better than I can hold myself better than I've been held in the past. And Teacher Z tells me I am talented that I should be proud, but I can't help but cry again about nothing in particular. And I wonder if the ceiling was always a facade I lay under the clouds. Thank you. I attempted to say a thing about that talent thing. People use that word and it sort of feels like what they mean is you were born with this thing but you have to like drag that out. That is work. Nobody, nobody writes like that without working at it. So I just wanna repeat what was told to you don't ever stop writing. Also love comes eventually, usually in weird shapes when you don't expect it. And all of the dumb things everybody always says about it. Rose, will you come up and read? There you are. Hi, so this poem that I'm about to read was inspired by two things. One, me and my mom met a survivor of domestic abuse and the second was that on the news I saw this woman had gotten killed by domestic abuse on International Women's Day. So I think I was sort of inspired to write about that. When the scarlet blood drips from the faucet of your mouth, I fear for your beauty. The language barriers communicate the same fear we live with. We scream for help in any language. I will seal you, I will help me. Our vocabulary fails to find a new word to define hopelessness. Bound by machismo, passed from fathers to daughters, mothers to sons, the water surface tension fails to relieve the burns on my skin. Volatility characterizes our world. Glass faces, glass pieces, stacked carefully. Beated glass sinks into my hands, blood drips in the sink. Emotional scars ridden with regret and chemter in the middle of midnight. I fear for your life, mine. The pillars turn to dust and I wonder how much can we take? When the street lights come on, I quicken my pace. Look both ways, front, behind, to the side. Is there escape? Am I perpetually bound to male judgment to the possibility of male violence? When I look at you, I realize how quickly it could become myself. Toxic love, romanticize, rose-colored glasses, the pink before bruises. As I grew older, I carried a new weight, sore from sexualization. If femininity is delicacy, I fear for the crushed flowers, cracked petals, and the stop sparkle in your eyes. How long will the dying gardens go unnoticed? How long will we scream for help until heard? Women of the world, you deserve all the love ungiven. To be nurtured in greenhouses, unexposed the elements, miracles fulfilled on ground. If my quill could write you heaven, I'd sign the sheet in a heartbeat. And the second one is definitely a little lighter. It's mostly just like, I guess, reflecting on childhood. Pretty similarly, I'm also a senior in high school, so there's a lot going on there. Soak skin, wrinkled like prunes. I loosened from your arms and ran back into the puddles. Of all things imaginary, I felt you near me. You made your way towards me in all the grace of a ballerina. Smooth and delicate skins features carved carefully into your face. Your fingerprints left imprints on my skin, crescent moons of what used to be staring at the sky above me, searching for some abnormality. Of all things real, I stared into you. Visible at only angles, certain reflections, you are me and I am you. Some semblance of solitude. I walked the trail back to you, the same wooden signs, fresh coats of dried paint penetrated into the railings for years. Sunburn scars adorned you, bleached playground where I both became and ceased to be. Exhilaration, when we first made that run for it, I sighed and we laughed in soaked clothes, crescent moons shining over us. I carefully craft sentences, lyrics, musical notes. I speak to you in both past and present. My pruny skin dries off as I recover from falls on the wet concrete. The sun is now gone, I laugh and rush into this shower because water cleanses water the same force, different purposes. I peeled off my sticky layers, cleansed by manufactured piece and stare at the tap as this drip drops stops. Yeah. It's incredibly good, isn't it? Huh? Oh, right. Oh, good, hi. Yay! Ha, ha, ha. Okay. Our next poet, Nyaruti. Hello, my name is Vyaruti and today I'm gonna be reading two poems and the first one is about school shootings, a very serious issue that we have here in the United States and yeah, so I'll start. Numbers have made us numb. Numbers plague my mind. Every single Monday morning I wake up in fear. Every single Friday afternoon I exhale a breath of relief. Why? Because of the numbers that plague my mind. The list never ends. 28, 17, 21. These are not just any numbers, these are the stories that abruptly ended before they could even unfold. How many more stories will we watch and to early in schools? Schools. What was once a sanctuary of peace and learning has now become deathbeds and graveyards. Children were supposed to feel safe. Innocent souls filled with dreams fall victim to the horrors and extremes of the world. We hear of a new tragedy every day. We hear of a new promise to end gun violence every day yet we continue to endure with no relief. Promises mean nothing in the face of death. Authorities simply watch as futures die. They fund schools and facilities but what is the point if our students are dead? What is the point if our futures are dying? But numbers have made us numb. 28, Sandy Hook Elementary, December 14th, 2012. 17, Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School. February 14th, 2018. 21, Rob Elementary School, May 24th, 2022. How many more numbers will it take? So that was my first one and this one, the second one is like a lot lighter. It's about like growing up and then like losing friends who betray you in all the worst ways. So it's called graveless. No graves have been dug and yet I mourn. For the loss of someone that I still know. Within me she exists wondering what went wrong. Wish she would have known that she wasn't flawed. Burning within her is the hollowness of regret. Her naivety would be her biggest threat. Loved all those who called themselves her allies, devastated when she found them behind enemy lines. If they were kind, maybe she wouldn't have let her mistakes plague her mind. Maybe she wouldn't have let, she wouldn't have lost the joy she used to easily find. Our next vote is Brian, the current youth laureate of Alameda County, with current co-youth. Is that right? Just a current. Okay, cool. Hi, my name is Brian. The first poem I will be reading is Spoken Wordpiece, sorry, wrong poem. Song for a warrior on the last ship nowhere. In 1852, 400 Chinese workers indentured to a Connecticut capitalist were placed on a ship supposedly headed to California. Upon realizing they were being trafficked to a Peruvian Chincha Islands, the men mutinied, finally disembarking off the coast of Japan, where some 60 stranded died. But, Biao Ge, is it a revolution if no one remembers? The way they've discarded our rhetoric, religion, I can't recall if I ever was holy. History burned in a white half-life name. In the mirror, I recite Mind Thrice so I can calcify into an American. Biao Ge, they treat us fine today, which means they still do not think we are real. Our hands churning a silicon machine, California tanned by American exceptionalism, which is to say that we are still burning, chosen tokens of the free, fed only when we're silent, exploited so good they call us white, almost. Don't you think it's funny how amorphous history becomes when its speaker denies its narrative? The Chinese Exclusion Act repealed mere years before my grandmother's first breath. Decades later, she watches on TV as her grandson's president calls her people a virus. Biao Ge, your exigence is unextinguished today, commodified and bruised, but we are still breathing like the best of Americans in tune with other communities of color we need to fight for more. Yes, let them call us uncouth, political, loud. Here I declare my cause. For my ribs I carve scarlet language so that bleeding my words hold power like you, booming like a battle cry for kinsmen or home. So visceral you would have thought the sound was born from God, blazing like scavenged July 4th fireworks, not destiny manifest, but an acute black hole. How we reclaim our forebearers' bones, mold them into temples. We, the people, subsidized for a national dream, we didn't so will not stop living, singing, seizing our voice. I'll give you that, Biao Ge, a prayer if not a tomb, buried foreign on Ishigaki Island, but cousin, I'll sing you a vision of home. Paint my body at 10, floating through hot urban decay. My last trip to China, a form of magic the same as not real. Visions of red bean, butchered, mandarin, native colloquialisms covered in sesame cause on the street I'm eaten whole. The moon fills on Zhongqiujie and for a moment I share your skin, Biao Ge, for a moment I believe in God. Thank you. And I have, I have one more poem. This one is a little bit shorter. It's called Home Poem and it's about sort of reflecting on like the town I grew up in before I moved to like a city next year, yeah. In the doorway, my dog is afraid to yell. I slip on my shoes and trace the drywall with acetone, soaked nails, paint-chipped scion, everything bruised. Upstairs, the shower tiles piece into a poem. I leave before evening hurdles. Exit into the town I tear up like a body, I crunch the gas, the pavement cradles the same ache as the absence of wisdom teeth. Newborn, all sockets left open. Roadway anesthetized, mouth-bleeding cherry before. My palms were the only entrance. When I return, it is already morning. My footprints allegeize the steps. Heavy the way snow falls on new years like children onto their mothers. My mother, palms split in the kitchen, thumbing the nape of my neck. She tells me to cut the strands pitched against my jaw, but I'm busy snipping the petals off tulips. I hold them like church, how the same purple faded from my windowsill at seven and a half. The stems splinter into marrow. Another form of slaughter. How come nothing is beautiful when pressed between my hands? Thank you. Anika. My name is Anika and I have two poems prepared today. All right, the first poem is called Teenage Girl Physics, which I wrote after feeling like I'm in that place where I'm not quite an adult yet, but to be taken seriously as an adult yet, but also I don't wanna be seen as a child. So, Teenage Girl Physics. Things that slow me down include sinister syllables sitting in the mouth of an adult who disagrees, lips heavy with intent to tell, I have already lost the numbers game, which is to say my 18 years pale in comparison to their 30 or 40 or 50. I was still pale, white, suckling milk when they dropped death in a war I didn't understand. Chasing the thinning tail of rationality is tiring, so once in a while I stop, breathing new life from sidewalk color and open armed hugs. When everyone is running in the wind, no one can tell which way it blows, but things that propel me forward include open armed hugs from adults who say I love you, I'm proud of you, I hope you eat well, golden chicken stock from Mother's Kitchen nurturing my pen and paper, I let her hope into lines my laced up shoes for the run. Next time I will say that 18 years have blessed me with a lightness you don't understand. I'm ready to fly above the things that slow me down. And then the second one is called Guzzle for the Bay. A guzzle is an Arabic form of poetry consisting of couplets and it's my first time trying to write something so structured like a guzzle, so I hope it works. Guzzle for the Bay. Striking sunlit silence trains make their way home. Glint reflecting off windows, send that ray home. Feet trudge, days ending through red, blue, Bart Roots. Sleeping child, dad's weathered bike, all sway home. And the city leaves embrace me, winds kiss me. Saxophone fills the street cause musicians, they play home. Our people stand firm to sing and dance our dream. Though crisis clouds news threatens to decay home, we love hard, we care for the community. Home is the Bay and Annika will stay home. Thank you. Tell you what, as a short, nearly 60 year old woman, they still treat me like I'm not an adult. So don't take it as personally as you might. It may continue, who knows, or maybe we'll manage to finally break some of this. Leah. Okay. So this first poem I'm going to be reading is called Ashes and it's about my grandfather. Your fingers curl like cigarette smoke to the rhythm of your shaking breath. The quiver of a man who's not yet ready to load the gun and fire. Fire that smolders in your heaving chest with stiff staccato breaths, coughing up the muddled clots of words once left unsaid. Fire that blazes, bursts, belches forth from your aching throat that hisses with the hacking hum of secrets stripped down naked. Fire that fades from glassy eyes that harden in the kiln. Embers glow fading, fading until they're cold to touch. In the water where we left you, I saw you drift away, but from where I stood, I could have sworn that you were standing still. And here I was gripping the rail, white-knuckled, my feet shifting on the dock, floating farther and farther away from you until you were out of sight. And here I was, my eyes gazed downward, the morning wind chilling my cheek, swirling down into the water and rippling into nothing. And here I was, my feet on the shore, the waves crash calling me back, but I had enough sense to keep my eyes fixed, facing forward. But even then I cannot leave, my feet are fused to the ground, the scent of incense chokes me, your ashes cling to my clothes. And then my second poem is called Reflections. And this one's, I don't really, it's a bit abstract, but let me just read it. If you catch sunlight in a mirror and pointed back at something, it'll catch on fire. In other words, to confront something with itself is to destroy it. So let us set ourselves ablaze in the mirror's face and see all that remains after. They say beauty is only skin deep. So let's peel back our skin layer by layer and run off into the night before they catch up with us. And if, my dear, they hunt us down to stick our skin back on, I'll claw them away and run back to where we came from where they can hurt us no more. They'll try and take our flesh, you know, rip it off the bone, boil it in a rusty pot, sink their teeth and swallow. They'll do anything for a meal, you know. They're hungry and so are we. They'll hold your head down in the water and crack your skull and spine just to feel full for a moment. So I'll heave off hunks of flesh and throw them to the dogs behind us until my bones can breathe and you can follow. If our bones prove too burdensome, I'll smash them against the ground, the ground they came from and cast them away before they come. And so they'll take the dust within their hands, grasping, grabbing, gripping the pieces, sniffing for a scent of us to prove that we were ever there. But we'll be looking from all around, giggling to ourselves, as we rest where we are just beyond their reach. If you really want to find us, look back in the mirror and if you catch the sun just right, there we will be if only you can see it. Thank you. That was a lot of really powerful work from a group of incredible young women and one young man. Amazing poets, thank you so much. And I make you this promise right now. I will make poetry as easy for you as I can. I will make the ground as flat for you as I can, not because I don't think you can, but because I can. And I hope that you'll do that for other people. Part of the trick of this game is to find good allies. And I'm about to introduce another one, somebody incredibly trustworthy, as well as a great practitioner of our art form. I was so delighted when he was named California State Laureate, because I knew he could do it, because these gigs are not about personal grandisement. They're about making poetry better. They're about making space for poetry. And Lee Herrick has been so far and will continue to be, I believe, an incredible ally for all poets. Please welcome Lee to the mic. Oh my goodness, you're making me emotional, Kim. Thank you so much. That means a lot, especially coming from you, the incredible former San Francisco poet Laureate. I think I may have told you this, but I kind of try to follow you and soak up the wisdom and the spirit when I can. So it's good to see you. And I am especially happy to be reading with these youth laureates. There's an incredibly beautiful fire in you. There's a wonderful music in you. I dare say there's greatness in you. And equally important, if not more so, I suspect there's some true goodness in you. Those are beautiful poems. So thank you and congratulations to all of you. I wish you the very best and I mean that. So I'm just gonna read a few poems. And if you'll bear with me, I wanna just say a short bit about the California poet Laureate ship. I'm realizing these statistics about California, right? I wasn't born in this country, but I've lived here for about 52 years now. And I'm told by different folks, for example, our population is almost 40 million. It's more than the entire country of Canada. It's about 10 million more people than the next most populous state, Texas. We've got more people here than 21 other states in this country. And one out of every four Californians was born out of the United States. So I'm one of those. And I'm so inspired. So one of the poems I'm gonna read is about California. One, I wanna read, can I read a food poem? I'm gonna read a food poem. I don't know why I'm asking. I'm gonna read it anyway, right? And then, you know what? I'm gonna read something. I don't do this a lot, but I'm gonna read something that I think it's ready that I've never read before. So I'm gonna do that. So the food poem. Do you like outdoor food, food trucks, barbecues, right? Oh, I'm like, my people. So I'm gonna read one of those. I was asked to write a poem about food and open spaces by a magazine in May 2020. So this is titled, Abyssidarian Love Song for Street Food. And it has an epigraph by the late Anthony Bourdain who said, street food, I believe, is the salvation of the human race. All praise for the Pazole glistening in midday light by the grace of the woman near the Komal. In Southern California, Raul Martinez unveiled a mobile downtown gold mine of Al Pastor by a bar in East LA for the drunks, the artists, and the necessary future waiting in line. Praise be to the ice cream truck, glory of the van's slow roll. So praise the van, hut, cart, booth, tent, stall, stand, bike, or truck. I once devoured a tlayuda in Oaxaca City, broke down just as the sunlight burst through the heart of a woman, kissing her baby's forehead by the plaza. When I say love, what I mean to say is I dream of you through disaster, malady, or this nightmare anxiety pandemic. But now, even in this late dying, let us praise the 20,000 open-hearted vendors in Bangkok and the glorious pupusas in San Salvador. I ate on a bench near a dove. Quesadilla, arepa, dukpoki, hallelujah. The banh mi right on the outskirts of Hue, the chili pepper, the cilantro songs, praise the Zocalo saints who brought me to tears with a taco so full of music I almost wept. Under the Beijing moonlight, balsa is made by angels, vendors with wings if you know where to look. On West 53rd and 6th Avenue, New York City, Halal, or in Fresno, no xenophobe is welcome. Tell me what to eat. Your chuan, your elote, your mouthful of pure zen, like savory, surprising flashes of heaven. Okay, so that's the 80s Adarian. Thank you. Is it a problem if I'm always, I mean, I don't think I have an eating problem, but I'm always thinking about food. San Francisco, a good food city, Alameda. It's Alameda, right? The youth lore. My sister was born in Alameda. And so that town means a lot. She was adopted, I was adopted. I was adopted when I was 10 months old. I was born in Korea and have never met birth family. Raised in Danville, actually, for about the first eight years of my life. And I've lived in Fresno now for quite a while. This is a newer poem. I feel good about the poem, but it doesn't have a title yet, so I'm thinking of calling it either acclamation or my name in a new country. My first language was the ocean. It sounded like my first mother's body, wave, storm, vanish. I love what wind does to the trees. I want nature to move me like that. My name is a song. In it, there are horses fed by a man who says, I feel American when I kill a row of ants and say they asked for it. We are this many miles from desire. We are immigrants turned imperialist. I love what wind does to the bay. Wave to me. Smile at me like you know my name. Like you love the ocean too. Or at least the way I glisten in the moonlight. All right. I don't know when you read a new one, you wanna see how I felt all right, but okay. So last one and thank you again to the youth poets, sorry, to the youth poets and to the family and friends and supporters and all who support support a brief thing about this poem. I just wanna say that my state project is called Our California and I'm inviting any and all Californians to write a poem about your town or your city or your state, your California. Immigrants, refugee, documented or not, any level of poetry writing experience. If you feel like sending something in, please do. You can find it online at the California Arts Council and we're publishing all of those poems at the California Arts Council website. So we'd love to have your poems. I wrote this poem when I was thinking about things I'd seen and imagined and hoped for and thank you again for having me, Kim. My California. Here, an olive votive keeps the sunset lit and the Korean 20-somethings talk about hyphens, graduate school, and good pot. And a group of four at a window table in Carpentaria discuss the quality of wines in Napa Valley versus Lodi. Here, in my California, the streets remember the Chicano poet whose songs still bank off Fresno's beer-soaked gutters and almond trees in partial blossom. Here, in my California, we fish out long noodles from the foe with such accuracy, you'd know we'd done this before. In Fresno, the bullets tire of themselves and begin to pray five times a day. In Fresno, we hope for less of the police state and more of a state of grace. In my California, you can wash the sun go down like in your California. On the ledge of the pregnant 22nd century, the one with a bounty of peaches and grapes, red onions, and the good salsa, wine and japchae. Here, in my California, paperbacks are free. Farmers' markets are 24 hours a day and always packed. The trees and water have no nails in them. The priests eat well, the homeless eat well. Here, in my California, everywhere is Chinatown. Everywhere is K-town. Everywhere is Armenia-town. Everywhere, a little Italy. Less Confederacy, no internment in the valley, better history texts for the juniors. In my California, free sounds and free touch, free questions, free answers, free songs from parents and poets, those hopeful bodies of light. Thank you all. So I've been kind of burning it at both ends lately. I had two gigs today, I have two gigs tomorrow. Saturday I'm reading like three times. And I walked in today with allergic eyes so bad that I can barely see people right now. And you guys healed me. It's really lovely to listen to you all. Thank you so much. Can we have another round of applause for every one of these poets? Work like that does not come from a lack of actual labor. And I am grateful for all of you. John, can you put your hand in the air, please? That's John Smalley, and two of you need to sign a waiver because we recorded you, and it's important that that happened before we walk out of the door. Thank you again so much. You've got about 10 minutes to schmooze and have coffee or whatever is on that table. And just appreciate each other because this was sublime. Thank you so much.