So happy to read with Andrei Codrescu, John Godfrey, Vincent Katz, Sharon Mesmer, Alicia Ostriker, & Anne Waldman this afternoon, in a series organized by Andrei & the Brooklyn Rail. A friend said, hmm, all white people (she didn't say "old white people" but she was probably thinking it) reading "radical political poetry," as the event was billed? Sure! We showed her! & anyone thinking that we can't still be on point.
And because it was on Zoom, my brother, my friend in Colombia, as well as several neighbors got to hear me.
Here's one of the works I read:
Personal History
I had never been in a city before I packed up my belongings in two paper bags and drove a thousand miles to spend the rest of my life in New York.
I was the smartest—& dumbest—girl in my 8th-grade class. Being dumb never got me into trouble, but being smart did, every day.
When he saw her in a tight teal fishscale dress, he knew he had to spill a drink on her.
I come from the prairie, my lies are long.