Youth Poets

On Tuesday, I had the opportunity to meet a group of youth from the South West Youth and Family Services Young Writer's Workshop. I was invited to chat with them about writing and to read some of my work. Every summer they gather to to express the Word -- what is true and beautiful and hard in their lives. The Boot https://bootyoungwriters.wordpress.com is where their poems are published.

They will celebrate the release of The Boot on August 12th, 2015 at 5:30 in the Youngstown Cultural Arts Center's auditorium in West Seattle. AND, this year The Boot returns to its original print format. Don't miss their performance and get a hold of that chapbook - It is worth every line!

Here is the one of the poems I read for them:

On my way to the Castle

Twice a day

This walk

Past empty corner lots

Liquor stores

Boarded up buildings

Prayer Mission Pentecostal Church

Retired condoms

Stuck in gutters

Lotto tickets littering sidewalks

The reek of despair

From seedy motel rooms

The color TVs can’t hide the stench

Praise Fellowship Christian Church

Twice a day

This walk

Past sullen faces with hawk eyes

Flimsy bodies inside loose garments

Boys, their wings of love lost long ago

Now turned into vermin spirits

Feasting on decay

Center of Hope Community Church

If a soul needs

Redemption

Or if the weight of things

Becomes unbearable 

Salvation 

Comes in many colors and languages

On Macarthur Boulevard

Available at each block

Between 72th^h and 86^th streets

Centro Evangelista Bethel

Todos los días

A lump in your throat

Today

Reliving your little brother’s asthma attack

Yesterday

The rape of your 20 year old aunt

The day before

The robbery at gunpoint of your best friend

 Al Islam Community Education Center

At the end of the road

Is a school

It once looked like a medieval

Castle high on a mount

Surrounded by lawn and roses.

Now black spears

Surround its tower

The moat long and narrow

Love Involvement Fellowship Education

This walk

Every day

How to think about factoring integers?

What about the causes of World War I?

Crafting a thesis statement?

All elemental truths

Like the mattress

With guts spilled out

In the middle of the sidewalk

Or the apartment windows

Dressed with stained sheets

Tied at the corners

                  Greater Life Community Outreach Christian Church

Walk and think

How to make yourself invisible

In each one of your classes

Hide your body neatly

Behind the head in front

When the teacher

Calls on you

The lump in your throat throbs

The worms 

Too many to hold back

Can come flying out

Spill out onto the desk

Crawl their hideous crawl 

Vision Ministries

But you are too kind

You spare your classmates the horror

And look back with an empty stare

Smile politely,

Hopefully, earn a pass

You ask yourself

Does anyone ever vomit

Butterflies

Whose wings lift

The grayness of things?

Originally published in Milvia Street  2010

Summer of Writing

With Luis Alberto Urrea

It started in Truchas, New Mexico with an inspiring three-day long conversation about poetry, readings and sharing with Ilya Kaminsky, Veronica Golos and Jeffrey Levine and poets from Boston, to Los Angeles, Washington to Louisiana.


Then off to Squamish, BC for a week at Quest Writer's Conference with Gregory Orr, Joy Harjo, Alicia Ostriker, Oliver de la Paz and Rebecca Brown. Re-connected with a VONA (Voices of Our Nation) sister and met a cohort of super talented, accomplished writers from Canada and the US.

Port Townsend, WA was my next stop - a week in a gorgeous location in a memoir workshop with the fabulous Wendy Call sharing space and soaking up readings by Luis Alberto Urea, Joseph Stroud, Gary Copeland Lilley and others.

Finally, back in New Mexico at MALCS (Mujeres Activas en Letras y Cambio Social) Summer Institute con el corazon en la mano - sharing ideas, cultura, poetry with an extraordinary group of Native American, Chicana and Latina women.