Thank you very much.
I'm very happy to be here for the first time, Tucson.
I have a best friend who's from here.
So I feel like I know all the main sights certainly Speedway.
And he assured me anywhere you go, you can't miss it.
You can't be in Tucson without being on Speedway.
I'd like to thank the people that helped make
this possible besides you all.
Alison Deming, of course, and Sherry
who's helping to make things possible
and gives us our elements and everything.
And the other students I've met here,
and past students Joel and Ila from the Center.
I'd like to thank them and all the other unnamed people
who helped make these events possible.
I'd like to begin by goosing the gooseneck.
I'd like to begin by reading this poem, which you mentioned.
The poem that I started when I was 17 years old
and finished when I was 20, it's one of the earlier
poems from this first book.
I'd like to read it by way of introduction.
I grew up in San Jose, California
in Avario, a neighborhood that is now the freeway 280.
The Vario has now been renamed the Vario Horseshoe
because the way the freeway goes,
you have to go all the way around in this big horseshoe
in order to cross the freeway.
So it's called Vario Horseshoe, you'll be hearing about that.
But that's where I grew up, in downtown San Jose, California.
Urban renewal, I'm sure it happens here in Tucson.
But they started building this freeway when
I was five years old, and I knew then
that they would finish it when I was 19.
So the whole time I was growing up,
in my own metaphorical mind, I associated my own development,
my own growing with the building of this freeway.
And this is a poem that's divided up into six sections.
And I'm just going to pause in between the sections
rather than read the section numbers.
There's a little bit of Spanish, Los Altos.
Los altos is the heights, it's a community
by Palo Alto in Stanford, upper class neighborhood.
Sal Si Puedes is in East side San Jose.
It's a place where Cesar Chavez the farm
worker of the farmworkers movement was born.
And Sal Si Puedes translates roughly get out if you can.
And borrachando comes from borracho.
And borracho is a drunk, an alcoholic,
and borrachando is sort of the process
of drinking like a drunk.
Anyway, this is the poem, Beneath the Shadow
of the Freeway.
Across the street the freeway, blind worm,
rapping the Valley up from Los Altos to Sal Si Puedes.
I watched it from my porch unwinding, everyday at dusk
as grandma water geraniums, the shadow
of the freeway lengthened.
We were a woman family, grandma, our innocent queen, Mama,
the Swift Knight, Fearless Warrior.
Mama wanted to be Princess instead, I know that.
Even now she dreams of taffeta and foot-high tiaras.
And myself, I could never decide so I turn to books,
those staunch, upright men.
I became scribe, translator of foreign male,
interpreting letters from the government, notices
of dissolved marriages and welfare stipulations.
I paid the bills, did light man work,
fixed faucets, ensured everything against all leaks.
Before rain I noticed seagulls.
They walk in flocks, cautious across lawns with splayed toes,
indecisive beaks.
Grandma says seagulls mean storm.
In California in the summer, mockingbirds sing all night.
Grandma says they're singing for their nesting wives,
they don't leave their families borrachando.
She likes the ways of birds, respects
how they show themselves for toast or whistle.
She believes in myths and birds, and she trusts only what
she builds with her own hands.
She built her own house, cocky, disheveled carpentry,
after living for 25 years with a man who tried to kill her.
Grandma, from the hills of Santa Barbara.
I would open my eyes to see her stir mush
in the morning, her hair in loose braids,
tucked close around her head with a yellow scarf.
And Mama said, "It's her own fault getting
screwed by a man for that long.
Sure as shit wasn't hard."
Soft, she was soft.
In the night I would hear it, glass bottle
shattering the streets, words cracking into shrill
screams, inside my throat a cold fear
as it entered the house in hard unsteady steps stopping
at my door, my name, bathrobe, slippers.
Outside, a 3:00 AM mist heavy as a breath full of whiskey.
Stop it, go home, come inside, Mama.
If he comes here again, I'll call the police.
Inside, a gray kitten, a touchstone
purring beneath the quilts grandma
stitched from his suits, the patchwork singing
of mocking birds.
"You're too soft, always were.
You get nothing but shit.
Baby, don't count on nobody."
A mother's wisdom, soft.
I haven't changed, maybe grown more silent,
cynical on the outside.
"Oh, Mama, with what's inside of me, I could wash that all away,
I could."
"But Mama, if you're good to them, they'll be good to you
back."
Back.
The freeway is across the street.
It's summer now, and every night I sleep with a gentle man
to the hymn of mockingbirds.
And in time, I plant geraniums, I tie up my hair
into loose braids, and I trust only what
I have built with my own hands.