And because it's a book length poem, I'm just jumping around,
but when you have it, you'll get to do whatever you want.
[LAUGHTER]
So I had the opportunity, this book length poem
is the first part of a series.
The second part is a book of essays
that includes interviews.
I interviewed family members, I interviewed Miriam Makeba,
I interviewed Russell Craig, folks who have been impacted
by prison, folks who are prison abolitionists,
and a cousin who actually just took his life, who finally got
out of prison went back into the world tried
to repay his debt to the community
and still was just broken, broken
from the effects and the impact that prison promises.
And I start the second part of this book with a quote
from Miriam Makeba.
She said, "we don't get how we are all
tied to the prison industrial complex, nobody's out."
A private prison can offer their services to the government
and charge $150 per day, per prisoner.
Constant threat in a box.
So you know what I'm saying, it's actually a box.
We miss this as adults.
We don't get enough visuals.
What is a threat except the possibility of danger?
What is dangerous about a Black man beaten for his defiance?
What is defiance except the refusal
to bow the bone that restricts the body from quaking?
The threat is all of us breathing constant threat.
I have nothing else to write about.
The steel bars haunt me.
I remember death and it knows my name.
We dance a dance if that is poetic enough.
I feel closest to my father with a dagger in my mouth,
or my mouth is the weapon itself when I slam bones.
Segregated.
Like a whisper, like a promise, if I were a betting woman,
I only bet on my ability to slam bones and walk away
from the shaky table every time victorious.
Segregated.
When I play dominoes, I am the one true King.
I am the one left breathing, I am, I am,
I am a worst kind of thief, I steal your swag right
in front of your own eyes, right in front of your own child.
Remember, I'm my father's first daughter.
And you will remember my name.
It is his, you know, and like any horrible tune radio
frequent with the static as constant as rain in Orange
County, there are 35 prisons in California.
I miss my father.
Since 2017, California's prisons populations
has hovered at about 115,000 inmates.
I miss my father.
Currently, there are 2.2 million people in prison or jail
nationwide.
I miss my father.
California's recidivism rate is ranked among the highest
in the country.
I miss-- I am, I am, I am your King, segregated, segregated.
House one, I got seven bones.
If you don't know how to play dominoes or the language
for it, this section isn't for you.
I got seven bones, that is actually in the text
just so you know I'm giving instructions as we go,
and every person at the card table look like my daddy.
House two, he loose like a body with the heart too soft.
He look weak, I bet his demise tastes good.
I slither, you ain't been hugged enough.
He heard your mother don't love you.
His face go slack.
My jaws tighten, ready for the blow.
The room get ghost, get silent, get mosque like.
I praise me today.
Watch me become the bed your mama climb
into every lonely night.
House three, my father'd been gone a long time,
but he taught me don't nobody with any sense clap
for mediocrity, so I don't.
The man child across from me is a Cheshire grin
full of beautiful teeth.
He smiles, and I see my father.
He laughs, and I see my father.
His haunt be my horizon.
Imma rise like the star.
Imma rise like Virgin Mary.
Imma to slam these dominoes and sip on that brown.
Wait for his heart to foxtrot from his throat.
Get with it or get hit with it.
The story arrives whether we are ready
or not to hold it close, its little voice singing off-key
with no fear, a kind of truth.
The first son of a young man and even younger woman
lifts like a fist from the red dirt of Homer, Louisiana,
and finds a patch in Berkeley, California
to toil until it becomes a home.
Name it, the big house.
The first son of a father from the military
and a mother with a penchant for horse racing
grows, ivy like, from the soil of a Bay Area revolution.
First son will forget and then remember
the weight of his hands.
Will press both thumbs into a human throat.
Will swing baseball bats and rage.
He will connect with a bag of flesh
and bones and dreams, my father red
like the earth from which his parents fled.
Relocated to a place where eight more would be born and die.
Among the streets of Berkeley, Oakland, Richmond, Antioch,
where each boulevard reeks of blood or car oil
drop top cherry Chevy's burned rubber.
An inheritance of abnormal hemoglobin, and a trench
of violence.
Here.
Yes, here.
Violence is considered love, too.