All right, Nicole, would you like to share something?
Happy to.
Thank you for that.
John, that's one of my favorite poems of yours,
and we do go back from 10 minutes ago in the kitchen,
so good to see you again.
Good to see you again.
And of course, dear Hanif whose generosity is exactly as John
described.
I just want to thank you all again
for having me be a part of this project.
I've had dear friends and family members incarcerated,
and having to go through that in a different way with those
incarcerated folks was difficult,
and their return home equally so.
So I appreciate being part of this
and being able to share some of this.
OK, some poems.
I'm going to read a couple more excerpts,
this time pages 22 to 29, and 30 to 34.
There against the eavesdrop of night.
Clear as a refrain, they were young running after mercy.
Its tail lights long gone, neither interfering
nor resisting profane, really.
Consider the severity flight imposes
on a deer, instances in which the animal out of nowhere
appears to flee two or three seconds too late, but does
so only because of a design oversight assigned
to this particular brand of the beast.
We are the same fleeing things, all evidenced for men
by the closing door behind us.
My point is, I decided for the second time
to force myself to stand in place.
A telltale sign that the conditions under which I
had been running were breaking the skin,
or worse, training the mind.
Who among us is stunned by how fast rain
can pour from the sky, stunned by how the sky, clear at first,
corrects itself as if to say, I mean this not that?
Thank you.
Thank you, Nicole.
I wanted to make sure that you had come to an organic pause.
Thank you for also sharing a little bit about what
it meant to be invited.
I think that one of the things that another one of our partner
is Kima, Kima Jones.
Can't forget Kima.
Kima and Dwayne, Tyler, we've all
spoken a lot about making space for both writers who
were incarcerated, writers who have been directly
impacted, but also all of the adjacent harm and trauma that
comes with having family members who
have gone through that experience,
and the effect of that is a trickle down effect,
and it affects everyone, and it was important for us
to bring people into the conversation
from all different perspectives who maybe have never
had an interaction with law enforcement,
because the more people that we have speaking about it,
the more it becomes all of our problem.
It doesn't become just the people who are away.
So thank you for saying that, because that's
a good just sort of thought to keep in mind
as we continue to move forward with the project.