Hi, I'm Jos Charles, I'm a poet,
and most recently, author of Feeld.
The project started of me trying to experiment
with putting together middle english and
a sort of text speak contemporary, and sort of to see
what would emerge.
And there's a poem near the end that's probably my
personal favorite, that I can speak to some.
There's this month in November of 2015,
in which three friends of mine, who are all trans women,
died.
So I was very sad, you know, in mourning.
That month I was turning 27 and all these things
sort of coalesced into this moment
in which the project sort of shifted.
This is number 57.
Tonight I would love to write the moth
and the garden, to grieve it, and as a matter of
form, did you know, not a month goes by a
tran I know doesn't die, just shy of 27 it's such
a pleasure to be alive
in this trembled suit you lent.
Shock is a structured response, a word lost in the
mouth of keepers,
and you thumb at the moth, a dozen bees.
I tether these nights, I gathered so many trees.
I'm Dominique Christina, and I'm a writer and a poet.
So I was looking up the entomology of the word anarchy,
and I found this name with an asterisk, Anarcha.
And decided to track her down.
And discovered that she was being written about
as a means to discuss a doctor, J. Marian Sims.
Who is presently regarded as the father of
modern day gynecology.
And he has that designation because of his
torturist experiments on enslaved women
during chattel slavery.
Anarcha negotiated more than 34 surgical procedures
at his hand, all without the benefit of anesthesia.
The first poem I'll read is very short.
It's called Dr. Sims Makes Something New,
and this is really when he was right at the part
where he was going to event the precursor
to what would become the speculum that's used
in gynecological exams.
What should happen most always is invention.
There is no wider mystery in the universe
than that of women.
What salt and bones she's got.
She's a composition of afterthought,
a borrowed rib if you know your Bible.
She is so easily disassembled.
I take the ruined stock of Eve, the wilted petals,
the spent flesh, and bring it wire,
steel, restoration.
Everything we delight in came first by the blood
of a woman, and then, and then, iron,
and what men do after.
Hi I'm J. Micheal Martinez.
And I guess I'm the author of this book.
I've been writing poetry, well I've been writing since,
second grade.
I recently found my first writings, and
they are hilarious.
And I realized what a quirky kid I was.
This is Museum of the Americas.
I began it in early February of the year that Trump
got elected, and I'd experienced a lot of racism in my time.
However since that election, there was a lot more
and a lot more directed at me and encountering
people who were wondering what I was doing
in their neighborhood.
I wanted to expose that and talk about that,
and also talk about how racism today
and how prevalent it is, is actually consistent historically
with how, and Latino and Latinas have been engaged with
since the early part of the 19th century.
The first poem I'll read, I wrote the day that
Trump was installed into office.
It's POTUS 45.
And this is the opening poem of the book
as I wanted to immediately declare the kind of politics
that the book was gonna be inhabiting.
POTUS 45.
This pivot point so carcass, carved servant who sweetens
only mirrors, where is the milk?