April is Poetry Month

...and we are showing up for it.

Youth Poet Laureate Highlight: A Celebration

If you’ve read even a couple of these missives from me over the past year, you can probably guess how psyched I am that we have arrived at a chance to celebrate a fantastic cohort of young poets who are finalists for Santa Cruz County’s Youth Poet Laureate position. I am so proud to share their names with you here, as well as a selection of their poems at the end of this newsletter (read on!). And I just want to say that since being announced as finalists a month ago, the five of them have met each other and are already supporting each other across the county. In my mind, that is what the YPL program’s all about! If you haven’t heard elsewhere, the finalists are: Madeline Aliah, Simon Ellefson, Sylvi Kayser, Dina Lusztig Noyes, and Gregory Souza.

You can help me celebrate them, and hear them read from their work next week on Wednesday, April 10, 6pm, at a free celebration at the Kuumbwa Jazz Center. Seating is limited: reserve your admission here. In addition to readings from each of these poets, two special guests will share work: Joseph Jason Santiago LaCour, delivering a poem for the cohort of writers, and Valentina Russell, Aptos High School senior and SC County Poetry Out Loud winner, reciting her winning entry. All are welcome!

Events on Tap

Tomorrow, Tuesday Apr 2 at 7pm: Hive Live! presents a very special evening of poetry to launch National Poetry Month. California Poet Laureate Lee Herrick & Pulitzer finalist Dorianne Laux, at Bookshop Santa Cruz. More info here.

Thursday Apr 4 2:30-8pm: Poetry of Witness at Cabrillo College to celebrate Arab American Heritage month. Workshop + Open mic. Room 322 Upper Campus. More information: gejonker@cabrillo.edu

Friday Apr 5 5-8pm: Opening Reception poetry reading in conjunction with the “Many Faces of the River” exhibit at River Studio. Poets: Queen Jasmine, Joseph Jason Santiago LaCour & Rica de la Luz. Studio 116 at the Tannery Arts Center.

Friday April 5 7-9pm: Satori Open Mic with two featured poets, Alex Calderwood and Greyson Meyer. Open mic follows. 815 Almar Ave. Unit 9, Santa Cruz. More info and signup here.

Apr 11 & 12: Naomi Quiñonez in Watsonville. Th 4/11: Poets’ Circle at Watsonville Library, Naomi Quiñonez reads 5:30pm, open mic to follow. Fri 4/12 Quiñonez will lead a free writing workshop at Freedom Library 10-1. Dr. Naomi Quiñonez is a Chicana poet and educator, author of three collections of poetry: Exiled Moon, The Smoking Mirror and Hummingbird Dream/Sueño de Colibri. A recipient of a Rockefeller Fellowship, the American Book Award and a City of Berkeley Lifetime Achievement Award in poetry, Quiñonez is featured in Notable Hispanic Women and the Dictionary of Literary Biography. More information: shflores@cabrillo.edu

Save the Date (and watch this space for more details)

April 26, 6:30pm, Cabrillo College: The Hive Poetry Collective presents In Celebration of the Muse, featuring 18 women, women-identified and non-binary poets.

April 28, 1:30-3:30, Mesa Village Park: Poetry and Music in the Park, featuring Chopsy Gutt, Sara Santistevan, and Rachel Huerta and The Watsonville Youth Orchestra & Pre-orchestra 

Poems from the finalists for Santa Cruz County Youth Poet Laureate (2024-25)

A Barkat of Ants
Madeline Aliah

My mom says
     Barkat means extra
A little extra food
     on your plate
When we had curry
     we had Barkat
When we had daal
     we had Barkat
When we had ants
     we had Barkat

My mom says
     Barkat means love
A little extra love
     from the cook
When she loved her friends
     she gave Barkat
When she loved a man
     she gave Barkat
When he was a pest
     she gave Barkat
He always cleaned his plate
     He always asked for more
          My heart sank

My mom says
     Barkat is rude
White people want
     to choose their portion
When I dish out
     I want Barkat
When I get love
     I want Barkat
When I have ants
     I want Barkat

They crawl into my bed
     And when I see them
     I hold them to my chest


I Never Forgot Her
Simon Ellefson

Because she was the color of fallen leaves;
of sweet candy on a summer's eve.
Because she saw the way
I looked for her in a crowded room.
Her name was Regret, and she smelled
like the first ripe lemons on a tree.
She told me of the way planets danced 
around stars and shed their atmospheres, 
of how she wished to shed her own.
I remember her breath, so quiet,
as if it came from a dream.
She drew me in with her touch,
though I knew it was a mistake.
She made me desire her-
a longing so strong it could rip the bones
from my chest.
She was the mother who slept alone in a bed for two.
She was the daughter who wore a sweater
three sizes too big.
And her name was Regret.


Some Pearl I Turned Out to Be
Sylvi Kayser

My skin was unmarred
As smooth as a freshwater pearl
the scars were drawn with invisible ink 
and painted with false hopes. 
No steel ever cut through my veins,
there never was a mark. 
But there didn’t need to be one.
I bit my fingers until they bled
I pulled my fingers until they popped
I forced my fingers down until they cracked 
It was awful 
	torture
	and it hurt.
I was stuck inside the mind of a mad woman, 
cuddling crazy like it was her child.
I couldn’t find a key and besides there was no lock:
there was no one but me forcing myself to do this
And that was what hurt.
I didn’t listen when I was pleading myself to stop
no amount of salt water tears ever gave way to saltwater pearls
I only had my arms.
And why did I do it? 
I’m screaming at the child, I want this playdate to end
But the mad woman shushes me, 
insists this is right. 
I did it because I had to.
I needed to know I was real. 


Feedback
Dina Lusztig Noyes

Step one: question everything.
Bloody fists truthward hurl,
because your kenning
is not “dead girl”...
yet.

Step two: answer them yourself.
Blink, you’ll die, not as two.
Darling all herself
that wasn’t you
cadet.

Step three: change angles.
A bullet’s war will grow
boy to man, mangled,
not boy to girl: so
burn me.

Step four: understand your want.
You are mannequin: broken toy.
Hope not yourself to haunt.
Do not ridicule the boy
turned she.

Step five: begin, self actualize.
Repair damage self inflicted,
but not self galvanized.
You were addicted.
Heart attack.

Step six: you are bulletproof.
Circular logic, how clever.
But, not weather proof.
Not forever.
You fall back.

Step seven: question everything.


Sestina
Gregory Souza

I float in a river of perfectly clear water.
Along the sides there is a dense forest
With tall wet trees and the greenest plants.
The sky is blank, the river reflects that nothing.
There is no bottom to the river.
Only a copy of the empty sky.

Because all that I can see is the sky,
Panic ensues as I cannot see the surface of the water.
Thrashing around struggling to breathe in the river.
The only point of reference is the forest.
Still, I feel trapped like I can do nothing.
To calm myself I look to the plants.

They have a sweet tropical smell those plants.
Unlike the stale cold lifeless smell of the sky...
Possibly better described as less than nothing.
Nevertheless they let me relax and float calmly in the water
Long enough to let me smell the faint musk of the forest
Reassuring me that it's all really real as I float down the river.

However I am cold in this crystal river,
So different from the air. Even the plants
Retreat from the shoreline to the warmer forest
Leaving me to be mocked by the dead sky
Which I soon will become if I can't escape this freezing water
My shivering body fighting to not fall to the river bottom's nothing

I focus on life, blocking out sounds, hearing nothing
Not the flowing sound of the river
Not the dripping sound of falling Water
Not the buzzing of insects on the plants
Not even the little wind in the sky
None of the sounds I once heard in this forest

My mouth is left dry by the Forest
I can taste the nothing
Of the surrounding Sky
I swallow the river
Watched by the longing plants
I sink; finally tasting the bitter water

The forest closes sadly over the river
Permanently trapping me in the nothing under the plants
No longer will I see the sky, only water