WEBVTT

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Hey, great to see you all here.

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Thank you again, poets for
being here with me today.

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And I'm hoping Nicole,
if you can start us off.

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And then we'll have Hanif
read, and then John.

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And we'll just continue in that
rotation, if that seems good.

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Sounds good.

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Thank you so much, Diana.

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And thank you to the University
of Arizona Poetry Center.

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Thank you to Dwyane
and Tyler Meier.

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All the crew and to co-readers.

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I'll first start by
reading a couple excerpts

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from The Ferguson
Report: An Erasure.

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I'll read the erasure first, and
then tell you a bit about it.

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Here goes.

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Pages 1 to 14.

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Excerpt from The Ferguson
Report: An Erasure.

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We call out as in we neigh.

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Heart reflex, heart reason,
heart particular urge.

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We are innocent as summer.

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As children in the park.

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As the short form of a name
belted out by the bereaved.

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Our living pending
this single instance.

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Records show we attempted to
make the most of our bones

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by controlling our bite.

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For which we are more
likely to be found guilty.

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We could hear the impact, an
act written for the stage.

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We heard blood echoing,
increasing in volume,

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increasing in reach.

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The forecast red, the
city red, diminishing

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to the proportion of red.

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Whatever it will be,
may be target practice.

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We pile into night
like men at a bus stop.

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So those are a few pages
from The Ferguson Report:

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An Erasure.

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As we know, an erasure
is a found poem.

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One created by erasing
an existing document.

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That document being, for this
project, the Ferguson Report.

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The Department of Justice's
100 plus page investigative

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report on biased policing
and court practices

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in Ferguson, Missouri.

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And the impetus for this
report was the fatal shooting

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of Michael Brown, an unarmed
18-year-old Black man

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by a white police
officer, Darren Wilson.

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And so, that's what I'm erasing.

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And those are just two excerpts.

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I believe I said they were pages
1 to 14, but the pages I read

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were 1 to 4 and 9 to 14.

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So I'll do a bit of jumping
throughout this reading

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back and forth.

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