#NationalPoetryMonth 2/30

child, i tell you now it was not
the animal blood i was hiding from,
it was the poet in her, the poet and
the terrible stories she could tell.

from “telling our stories”

Today’s read: Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems, 1988-2000 by Lucille Clifton

The best day of hiking yet. We only encountered five people total and they were all courteous and respectful of social distancing.

At the end of the hike, we heard some intense yelling. I immediately thought we would run into a group of tech hipsters who had traded in their open work spaces and coffee shop hangouts for the open trails. As we got closer it was clear that the shouting was religious chant. In the back of a hill, a woman was hollering “Señor Dios. ¡Señor Dios!” in rhythmic and desperate chants. Another woman was witness.

Barb asked me if I could make out any of the Spanish. I only had one word, Suplicación. We walked by quickly to be sure not to disturb.

Thinking back, I was being reverent. But I was also scared and hiding. She was the woman Clifton wrote of. Her voice was filled with “animal blood.” I am sure her reason to be calling to her Lord must be both wondrous and terrible.

#NationalPoetryMonth 1/30

There is no storyteller like a storyteller with a broken nose.

Martín Espada. “A Million Ants Swarming Through His Body.” Vivas to Those Who Have Failed: Poems

Today I took care of different parts of myself. I have always believed that being fit in the gym meant that I had my head on straight and that I was walking into a workout ready to give a hundred percent. The only way to do that is if there is some kind of order and care to much more than my ability to squat or do burpees.

In addition to maintaining my commitment to working out every day, I am going to participate in National Poetry Month by reading a poetry book every day in April. I am not going to be doing any kind of detailed critique or review. My minimum spec it to share a line of poetry that really connected me to the work.
We have also been doing much more home cooking than we have before. This has also been sustaining my fitness more so as a creative outlet than in any kind of strict diet way.

There you have it. Some poetry, some workout, some eating. That’s what is helping me get through the days.

Cover photo by Frank Espada

1) I read Martín Espada’s Vivas to Those Who Have Failed. The last section of the book, a series of elegies written to Espada’s father had the deepest impact.
Favorite line in the book, “There is no storyteller like a storyteller with a broken nose.” #nationalpoetrymonth

2) I did 50 minutes of Guardian Gym boxing via Zoom. This kicked my ass something good. This is the first boxing class of any kind I have taken since 2016 so I am curious which muscle groups are going to be sore tomorrow. #FitInTheTimeOfCorona

Yes, we used TJ’s taco seasoning.

3) Mise en place everything. This is the start of my beef chili recipe. You will find some classic ingredients and you will also find some non-traditional ones here. Some behind the scenes commentary, there are a bunch of items here that I picked up two weeks ago when supermarket shelves were looking really thin around these parts. I was so happy to find some of these items that I said: Ok, guess we eatin chili for the next 20 days then. #SurvivingInPandemic

Anticipating: Fringe – The Series Finale

I remember randomly tuning into an episode of Fringe about three years ago in the middle of their second season and thinking, “What’s with this X-Files rip off and why the hell is Dawson’s Creek in it?”  It didn’t help that this particular episode involved quite the bit of time travel, paradoxical looping and, to add to the random, Peter Weller of Robocop fame.  It became a bit much and I tuned out as fast as I tuned in.

Flash forward a couple of months to the series finale of Lost, another JJ Abrams series that I got completely immersed in, and was also chomping at the bit to see how this modern mythology would end.  Looking back now, my evaluation of Lost was affected by how much I loved the series and ended up giving the writers and creators way too much leeway with their finale. Looking back, I am disappointed in how they one of TV’s most original mythos and gave it not just a pedestrian ending but also a US ending where everything is fine in the end.  Ugh!  Lost should have been the epitome of tragedy, an island where all souls, no matter how noble or twisted, have already squandered their chance at redemption.

Yeah, I’m still bitter about it.

But now Fringe, the series that took over for Lost has a real chance to be more than an X-Files clone or another Abrams series, it can really be a hallmark for a lost art in US TV writing, a true American tragedy.

Spoilers ahead:

Continue reading “Anticipating: Fringe – The Series Finale”

The Grinder Reading Series at Telegraph Cafe – Nov 8th

The Grinder Reading SeriesTelegraph Café Presents
A Monthly East Bay Reading Series & Open Mic
THE GRINDER ~ Thursday, Nov 8th, 2012 630-9 PM

Featuring –

Laura Jew is an Oakland native, a tough mudder, baking lover, and a student in her final year at Mills College. She is a proud fellow of Kundiman, a program for Asian American poets, and a recipient of CSU Chico’s annual creative writing award. Her poems have appeared in Watershed and, more frequently, on the desks of her professors.

Lauren Peck is a Southern transplant in pursuit of adventure and has one of those MFA degrees in Creative Writing. She’s primarily a poet, but is also currently writing a work of short stories about the misperceptions of monsters. She collects old love letters and lives in Oakland.

Born in Ecuador and raised in the Bronx, Oscar Bermeo is the author of four poetry chapbooks, most recently, To the Break of Dawn. He has taught creative writing workshops to inmates in Rikers Island Penitentiary, at-risk youth in the Bronx, foster teens in San Jose, bilingual elementary students in East Oakland, and to adults through the Oakland Public Library’s Oakland Word program. He is a Bronx Recognizes Its Own, CantoMundo, SF Intergenerational Writers Lab and VONA: Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation poetry fellow.

Thurs, Nov 8th at 6:30pm
FREE Event
Telegraph Café
2318 Telegraph Ave
Oakland, CA 94612
Full Menu of delicious sausages, baked goods, and beverages. Plus $2 PBRs.

LitCrawl and PAWA present Barrio Fiesta

I’m honored and excited to host this event tomorrow at LitCrawl. These are some amazing writers who are really invested in both their stories and their connection with community and I know they’ve been workin hard to make sure that this is THE event people will be talkin bout during LitCrawl. Y’all should come out and support the poetry and enjoy the lumpia.

Barrio Fiesta: A Literary Celebration

Irma Pampagna Restaurant
6:00 – 7:00 pm, Oct 13,2012
Presented by Philippine American Writers and Artists (PAWA)

PAWA is partnering with Irma’s Restaurant to bring you Barrio Fiesta: a reading where five writers will share work about a celebration. The celebrations will be culinary, cultural or focused on the community. In the spirit of every good Filipino Barrio Fiesta, lumpia will most likely be served. Featuring Lisa Abellera, Melissa Sipin, G. Justin Hulog, Jennifer Derilo, and Aileen Suzara. Hosted by Oscar Bermeo.

LISA ABELLERA earned her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of San Francisco. Her work appears in The Southeast Review, Lowestoft Chronicle, and The Globetrotter’s Companion (Lion Lounge Press), an anthology of creative travel writing. She lives in the San Francisco Bay area, where she is currently at work on a collection of short fiction.

JENNIFER DERILO has a BA in Literatures of the World from UC San Diego and an MFA in Literature and Creative Writing from Mills College, where she was its first Jacob K. Javits Fellow. She is the Creative Nonfiction Editor for Kartika Review and an English instructor at Southwestern College. She enjoys writing and reading about people and things unseen. She often has nightmares about zombies. And abandoned predicate parts.

G. JUSTIN HULOG writes stories about ruined gods, forgotten spaces and new worlds. Born in Baguio City, he grew up in California before leaving home to study Comparative Literature at Columbia University. He has written for Hyphen, Remodelista, Karma Magazine and edits a Filipno food and bulul blog called The Palay. Justin is currently completing his MFA in Creative Writing at San Francisco State University.

MELISSA SIPIN is a writer from Carson, California. She was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2012 and her writing has been published or is forthcoming in Kweli Journal, Tidal Basin Review, and Kartika Review, among other publications. Melissa was awarded the full-tuition assistantship in narrative writing and community engagement at Mills College and is currently pursuing her MFA in fiction.

AILEEN SUZARA is a Filipina/American educator, cook, eco-activist, organic farmer and adobo champion. She finds inspiration in the power of story to create change — from the voices of climate change fighters to the oral histories of California’s AAPI farmworkers. Aileen’s writing appears in The Colors of Nature, Earth Island Journal, Growing Up Filipino II, and more. She blogs on food, memory and place at Kitchen Kwento.