Speak Poetry in San Mateo County

Kevin Madrigal Galindo

Kevin Madrigal Galindo is a food justice advocate who is reimagining health with ancestral Mexican cooking. He is a first-generation Chicano hijo de su chingada madre from South San Francisco by way of Zapopan, Jalisco. Kevin’s work has been featured in The Boiler, Bozalta, The San Franciscan, & Edible East Bay. His first chapbook Hell/a Mexican is out now(!) with Nomadic Press.

Kevin shines light on the comunidad whose work supports countless American lives. In his free time, you can find him feeling his feelings to highly curated R&B playlists.

In 2022, Redwood City Public Library hosted a reading to celebrate the release of Kevin’s book, Hell/a Mexican.

Poem on Belonging

GUALMAR

after Terrance Hayes

I come from a long line of code-switching enunciations
Gualmar, Cosco, Estánfor, & Piksa Hoot all in my neighborhood
& matter of fact all of my gente work there.
I come from a thousand laps ran with Payless kicks
legally counterfeit backward swooshes y mas barato
I am three parts pan dulce, two parts la chancla
scars and one part communion wine.
I’m from “hijos de su chingada madre” straight out
the hocico of mi chingada madre. Phrases as sacred, aftermath not
calculated till A+’s in algebra & English teacher scolded parents
nuisance & unfocused & illiterate & diction deficient
“hijo qué dijo tu maestra” y “nada, no te preocupes” translating signs
from English to Spanish soon as I learned to breathe. CA my home
they say it’s empathy’s fault that causes these quakes. My ancestors
whispered in my ear to unfinish degrees advised otherwise, true to blood
that circulates through these frijolero veins.
I’m from a technicality, youngest in my family
miscarried unmet sister would have beared a beautiful
first communion dress, instead it was me. My search history reeks
of fermented agave & missing names + obituary. South City &
Zapopan raised me. Dutch crunch sandwiches & tortas ahogadas would test positive
in my curly hair, if my culture was considered a drug; a threat. Which it is. I come
blessed like the 15 Virgen de Guadalupes found in my home. They say I never stay put
& yet laid me in a crib. When the morning came I was out the door crawling,
walking, running & I haven’t stopped since.

Find Kevin’s book in the library!

Hell/a Mexican (2022)

Civic Engagement

Co-Founder, Farming Hope, a non-profit organization dedicated to the therapy, skill training, and personal development for unhoused, low-income people, and segments of the population facing discrimination regarding employment acceptance.

Antonio de Jesús López

Antonio de Jesús López has received scholarships to attend the Community of Writers at Squaw Valley, Tin House, the Vermont Studio Center, and Bread Loaf. He is a proud member of the Macondo Writers Workshop and a CantoMundo Fellow. He holds degrees from Duke University, Rutgers-Newark, the University of Oxford, and Stanford University. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in PEN/America, Insider Higher Education, Palette Poetry, The New Republic, Tin House, Poetry Northwest, and elsewhere. His debut poetry collection, Gentefication, was selected by Gregory Pardlo as the winner of the 2019 Levis Prize in Poetry. Between 2020 and 2024, he served as councilmember for the City of East Palo Alto. He was appointed San Mateo County’s 5th Poet Laureate in April 2025, and is expected to receive his PhD in Modern Thought and Literature from Stanford University in June.

Visit the Official Poet Laureate page for more information about the Poet Laureate program.

Find Antonio’s book in the library!

Gentefication (2021)

Ida J. Lewenstein

Ida J. Lewenstein is a retired English-as-a-Second-Language instructor of some 22 years who wears several hats. She has written many poems, chants and rhymes to reinforce, in a fun way, the structures she was teaching. Some of these have worked their way into imaginative story poems for children. She is a long-standing member of the California Writers Club (CWC) San Francisco Peninsula Branch, and some of her poems and stories appear in their anthologies. She also belongs to the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI), and is the author of several children’s books. Ida attended the University of Washington, Seattle, and San Francisco State University.

Poem

SUPPOSE… SUPPOSE

Do you have a wiggle inside of you?
What does it do…?
Just what does it do?

Suppose…suppose…
You wiggle your toes
And the wiggle inside
Wiggles up to your nose.

Suppose…suppose…
You then wiggle your nose
And the wiggle wiggles
Right back to your toes!

Up to your nose
And down to your toes
Up and down
Uh…oh! There it goes!

Suppose…suppose…
You say to this wiggle –
STOP RIGHT NOW!
You’re making me wriggle
And when I wriggle
I start to GIGGLE!

WRIGGLING and GIGGLING
Is all I do –
It’s bothering my Mama
And my Daddy, too.
Can’t you find
Something else
To do?

But a wiggle is just a wiggle
And you can talk ‘til you’re blue
After all, wiggles must wiggle
What else can they do?

Monica Korde

Monica Korde is the Poet Laureate of Belmont, California and currently hosts the monthly open mic series Belmont Poetry Night. She has been one of the three judges for the Fourth Annual San Mateo County Poetry Out Loud competition and has also co-judged the First Annual WordSlam Youth Poetry Contest. Her poetry has appeared online in The New Verse News, Filoli Winter Haiku, San Francisco Public Library’s Poem-of-the-Day and in the Speak Poetry anthology. Her readings have appeared on KKUP Radio, on social media and her poems have also been awarded prizes at locally held poetry contests. She has worked with local poets to organize and host poetry events to amplify youth voices and has been co-hosting Poets Night, a bi-monthly open mic. She has a Master’s degree in English and a Diploma in French language. Born and raised in India, Monica is a former educator and continues being a community service volunteer, a calligrapher, and a motorcycle enthusiast.

Poem on Belonging

TRACING MY ROOTS

I can’t trace myself to kings or queens
nor can I tell you if I come from
a family of war heroes or saints.

What if I say I come from a root word?
Having my own existence but yielding
and strong enough, to shape a language,
to create new meanings. If I could tell
my younger self something, I’d tell her
she doesn’t need to be any one thing.

What if I say I come from an ancestral
manuscript? An old story preserving
pieces of history, waiting to be
restored, to be rewritten, to be translated.
Waiting to bring back to life
a voice buried deep.

What if I say I come from a heritage
of poetry my mother makes, poems I taught myself
to write, and poems I have grown up reading?
From Tagore to Frost, from Dickinson to Angelou
I have found myself again in Mary Oliver
and Nye, in Harjo and in Tishani Doshi.

I am retracing myself to my art. Writing,
and rising with Poets Laureate of the bay
and now I take up the torch.

What if I say this is the lineage I call back upon.
This is the tradition I build upon today. And I feel
healed in knowing I am not only a word on a page
but a voice alive in this time, in this place
and everything that I come from
is only guiding me forward.

Poet Laureate Projects

Appointed by the Council of the City of Belmont in 2021, Monica Korde will serve as Belmont Poet Laureate through 2024.

Current Host, Belmont Poetry Night

Project POETRY 360

Maurine Killough

Maurine Killough is a guided imagery practitioner and hypnotherapist, as well as an award-winning poet. Her publications include “Aparagraha” published on the Sonoma Fire Wall and poems in several editions of The Fault Zone, The Diploemat (2nd place in the Great War to End all War Contest), Poems from Conflicted Hearts by Tayen Lane Publishing 2014, Sandhill Press Fault Zone 2013, Loch Raven Review 2011, EskimoPi 2013, Volumes 1 and 2 of Carry the Light by Sandhill Press Review 2012 and 2013, and in SenSexual 2013 Anthology, Volume 1.

Poem

12 MILES

12 miles on a cracked rope road
from the trailer town
to mineral wells

12 miles between an 8-year old
and her halloween costume
so she might become cinderella,
a ballerina or casper the friendly ghost

he stiffly started the car up to make the 12 mile trip
clenching the steering wheel
with the grip of a victim
on a sinking life preserver

grim reaper seated between us
halloween candy anticipation for me
halloween hell, coming early for him

12 miles on a cracked rope road

dry breath wind, pinching his chest
anvil paralyzing my daddy’s heart
nothing for miles but the arcing ribbon of the road
on that palo painted crust-scape,

save for the one gas station
where our car slammed stop and he fell out
jack-in-the-box-fast, rolled on the grainy ground
daddy, a shrunken jack-o-lantern

12 miles on a cracked rope road

halloween hell beginning in earnest now
helpless 8-year old
waiting for adults to come to the rescue
as his cardiac failure proceeded
reaper at my side

12 miles of cracked rope
choking my life
cinderella dream and trick-or-treat candy
dead and buried

everything White…
the crusted plateaus, the gas station and the White car I see racing to our rescue on the tight-rope road
Mr. White with a shock of White hair and the grip of Mr. Clean
sweeps my crumpled father into the backseat
me in the front, taking over
as grown-up as i can be, answering a stream of questions:
yes, this is my daddy, no, my mother died, no, there is no one to call, yes, we live in palo pinto, i don’t know, i don’t know

12 miles achieved, at the end of that cracked rope
the last image i see are the electrodes on his leaping body
then the door closes

and i’m ushered to the nurse’s station
to doodle on a pad, swing my legs
and wait alone
for someone
anyone
to throw me a rope

Jasmeen Karan

Jasmeen Karan is a 33-year native of the Bay Area and was born and raised in San Mateo, California. The daughter of first-generation Indo-Fijian immigrants, (Asian and Pacific Islanders), Jasmeen is the descendant of indentured laborers from the Fiji Islands. A first-generation college graduate, she earned a Bachelor of Science (B.S.) from California State University, East Bay (CSUEB) and a Master of Health Administration (MHA) from University of Southern California (USC). She is also a volunteer advocate with the Alzheimer’s Association.

Jasmeen Karan writes creative poetry, gaining inspiration from personal experiences and life events. At the age of six (6), Jasmeen won third place in the Martin Luther King Jr. Essay, Poetry, and Art contest. She hasn’t stopped since and is excited to share her poetry with the world! Jasmeen featured in countywide poetry events, including Immigrant Heritage Month hosted by the San Mateo County Office of Community Affairs.

Poem on Belonging

BLUNT SURPRISE

Second-generation immigrant,
I must concurrently,
Balance two cultures,
Speak “Fiji-Hindi”, fluently.

American and Indo-Fijian,
Poet and professional,
A daughter and caregiver,
In a nutshell.

Funny to see reactions,
When strangers look at me.
I’m not usually,
Who they expect me to be.

They assume I’m uneducated,
And underestimate me.
Think I’ll have an accent,
So ignorantly.

But I’m beauty and brains,
Brown and bold,
Book- and street-smart,
With a heart of gold.

A blunt surprise,
Few get to see…
I proceed with caution,
Selectively.

Betrayal from friends,
Family and colleagues.
So, I built a wall,
Fifty feet around me.

Some say I’m “too young”,
To be a caregiver.
They think they know my life,
But, I share drops of a river.

Keep to myself,
Miss Mom, the old days…
Wondering why none help,
But have so much to say?

I’ve endured a lot,
Lost many I loved.
Remember in silence,
Trust the one above.

Generations of trauma,
So much tragedy.
Ancestors in Fiji,
Were victims of slavery.

Brought on ships from India,
Illiterate and poor.
Exploited, assaulted,
So much more…

Their sacrifices, I know,
I must forge ahead.
“Leave a mark”,
Is what Mom said.

Respect yourself,
The family name.
Always show up,
Through the pain.

Most will talk,
They don’t see,
The sacrifices,
The full journey.

But I handle things,
Effortlessly.
Trust my instincts,
Like a “G”.

Honor the fallen,
The ancestors.
True to my roots,
Humble in character.

Win some, lose some,
Life goes on.
Day in, day out,
I carry on.

Head up,
With courage and grace.
None like me,
In time and space.

Toughest soldiers,
Get toughest battles.
I’m built for it,
I can herd the cattle.

I change my perspective,
When handed tests.
Reprogram my mind,
God handles the rest.

A blunt surprise,
Most doubt me.
I prevail, though,
Because Bibi taught me.

Caroline Goodwin

Caroline Goodwin moved from Alaska to the San Francisco Area to attend Stanford as a Wallace Stegner Fellow in poetry. Her seven books of poetry are woven into the natural world. Her most recent collections are Old Snow, White Sun (JackLeg Press), Madrigals (Big Yes Press), and Matanuska (Aquifer Press, Wales, UK). She lives on the San Mateo coast with her daughters and teaches at the California College of the Arts. From 2014-2016, she served as the first Poet Laureate of San Mateo County.

Poem on Belonging

HORSEBACK

my daughter in the saddle the hills
not rising behind her not coming up not
jutting into the sky but rather
holding her like a couple
of large soft arms
as the animal turns
at the far end of the fence and heads
back toward me I am standing at the gate now
and I can sense the valves of my heart opening
and thumping shut steady as hooves unbeautiful
as a thing you’d find beneath a stump
something mysterious and unidentifiable
with jagged edges asymmetrical and perhaps a dark
purple maybe the size of a fist (like they say)
but so distinct from anything you’ve ever
seen before that you’re moved to invent
a new kingdom a realm untouched
by the physical world
where the need to name the shape
does not even exist
and nothing can be pinned
down or held as evidence and nobody
knows the code or holds the key

Find Caroline’s books in the library!

Matanuska (2022)
Madrigals (2022)
Old Snow, White Sun (2021)
Trapline (2013)

Poet Laureate Project

Appointed by the County of San Mateo Board of Supervisors in 2014, Caroline Goodwin served as the Inaugural Poet Laureate of San Mateo County through 2016.

“My community project was to promote and judge county-wide poetry campaigns and contests, all organized around a theme and culminating in an event at a different venue. With support from Carole Groom’s office and staff, and Warren Slocum’s office and staff, we promoted each campaign throughout the county. Our first event was “Poetry Is” and California Poet Laureate Emeritus Al Young featured at the Belmont Library with Lakiba Pittman, Kalamu Chache, and the winners I selected from the different age groups: Youth, Teen, Adult. Thereafter, we promoted such themes as “Poetry is Heritage,” “Poetry is Autumn,” “Poetry is Nature,” “Poetry is Love,” and “Poetry is Family”. We held one event at the Fair Oaks Community Center, and featured Santa Clara PL David Perez for Poetry is Heritage.”

—Caroline Goodwin, Inaugural San Mateo County Poet Laureate

Jeannine Gerkman

Jeannine Gerkman, Author, Poet, Realtor, is the author of Spring (a sun-drenched picture book) and creator of numerous light-hearted poems. Her next project, Armadillos Amble, is an illustrated children’s picture book featuring 26 animals in alphabetical order doing things matching their letter (that rhymes!). Check her out at authorpoetrealtor.blog.

Poems

NAPTIME

Let’s snuggle together with some crackers and juice,
And turn the pages of my Dr. Seuss

We’ll read about creatures big and small,
Watch their antics and have a ball.

I’ve been reading since I was four,
We’ll read a little and then
Read some more.

About ships and spoons and
Cats and owls,
We’ll slide with verbs and
Skip with vowels.

We’ll play in water both wide and deep.
We’ll slosh and splash
And then drift to sleep.

MORNING

Bathed in sunshine
Glistening with dew
The morning has started
The day’s begun anew

Children are streaming
To take their place at school
My face is beaming
I’m grinning like a fool

The air is crisp and bracing
My steps sure and strong
Whatever I might be facing
Will never turn out wrong

Find Jeannine’s books in the library!

San Mateo County Libraries

Paul Fericano

Paul Fericano is a poet, satirist, social activist, and editor/publisher of Yossarian Universal News Service, the nation’s first parody news syndicate, founded in 1980. His poetry and satires have appeared in numerous publications and media outlets in the United States and abroad since 1971, including The Realist, The Best American Poetry, Saturday Night Live, The New York Quarterly, Mother Jones, 2 Bridges Review, Krokodil (Moscow), Punch (London), Charlie Hebdo (Paris) and Satyrcón (Buenos Aires). He is the author of several books of poetry, including The Hollywood Catechism (Silver Birch Press, 2015), and Things That Go Trump in the Night: Poems of Treason and Resistance (Poems-For-All Press, 2019), winner of the 2020 Bulitzer Prize. Fericano is a survivor of clergy sexual abuse and an advocate for other abuse survivors. He served as director of the nonprofit Instruments of Peace / SafeNet from 2003-2013, and his essays on the healing process are archived and available on his blog, A Room With A Pew. During the 1970s, he helped promote a greater awareness of the importance of small and literary press publications. With a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, he established the Small Press Racks in Libraries project (SPRIL) which made small press books and magazines accessible in 10 California libraries. He is a San Francisco native and a resident of San Bruno.

Poem on Belonging

I AM SICILIAN

My nannu lived with us in San Francisco
Sat with ghosts at our kitchen table

Spoke softly intently out loud
To no one in particular any time of day

Sugnu Sicilianu he would say again and again
I am Sicilian

Reminding repeating remembering
Sugnu Sicilianu

Whispering riddles Canusci la tò famigghia
Know your family

Breathing secrets Dicci cui sì
Tell them who you are

My mother his youngest child would nod her head
Bring him dark bitter coffee in a small cup

Thick slice of bread with butter rub his shoulders
Coax him to eat papa, manciassi

Me listening as a young boy listening watching
As though I too was old and wise and crazy

Sugnu Sicilianu I would say
To my nannu fading like the wallpaper

To the Maltese nuns who tried to teach me English
The German grocer who knew better

The aunts and uncles who always seemed amused
The doctor who gave me a tetanus shot

Told me I was a brave little monkey
Sugnu Sicilianu I would say

Showing off my olive skin
Some mysterious truth I couldn’t confirm

Like a menacing tattoo on my upper arm
Or a hideous scar on my chin

Struggling to recall its meaning
How it got there who gave it to me

Old enough to sense it wasn’t the same
Growing up normal ordinary predictable Italian

Absorbing the same slurs and thoughtless abuse
The crude animated stories insults jokes

Learning retelling for laughs acceptance
Skinny butch cut Jerry Lewis kid

Good sport regular guy took a punch
Sugnu Sicilianu I would say

Bearing the added weight of mafia shame
The great kissers romancers of death

Shadows with handshakes that never washed off
Cobblers of cement dress shoes

Unwanted messengers who carried codfish
Wrapped in the Sunday comics

Muscular waxed mustachioed men spitting smoke
From greasy cigars that stunk up the park

Sugnu Sicilianu I would say
Listening for clues mumbled in noiseless rooms

About the fascisti and starched brown shirts
The vicious landowners fat with lust

About the fear infecting the island
The fury rage the sorrow in Palermo

The betrayal distrust the sealed lips
Before and after wars were won and lost

And about my great-grandfather Graziano
How nobody ever spoke of him

How he went menzu pazzu crazy with grief
The night a wild pig from the woods

Mutilated his infant son only three days old
Asleep in his crib

Dark brutal sounds retreating into the underbrush
His wife wailing moaning collapsing

And him hysterical
Running naked through the unbelieving streets

Clutching his only other son my nannu
Cursing god the devil the world

Screaming his lungs out in the dark
Sugnu Siciliano

In a town where everyone knew
Who he was

Find Paul’s books in the library!

San Mateo County Libraries

Civic Engagement

Founded Small Press Racks in Libraries (SPRIL) in 1976 with a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, which made small press books and magazines accessible in 10 California libraries.

Sanderson Dean

Sanderson Dean is an Emmy-award winning writer in the wonderful world of entertainment advertising. From NYC to LA, he’s worked on thousands of movies, tv shows, and video games for numerous movie studios, television networks, and advertising agencies. And after more than 20 years in the business, it’s a safe bet you’ve seen, heard, or read some tiny tidbit of entertainment advertising he’s spent countless hours toiling over. But perhaps his biggest accomplishment – is surviving his two boys. He now resides in Burlingame, still copywriting for Hollywood, and using his spare time to write poems about poop and other messes. Sanderson’s poetry, humor book, STARK RAVING DAD, is now available at all major book stores. The book is illustrated with pre-school & grade-school art from his two boys, and packed with poems covering everything from plunging toilets, to being puked on, to grinding up Star Wars figures in the garbage disposal! You can check the book out at RunningPress.com, or StarkRavingDad.com (also on IG & FB @strkravingdad)

Poems

LOVING HANDS

Always grabbing
Always clinging
Always sticky

Where have they been?
What have they touched?
When were they clean?

Now, they’re here
Rubbing my face
Your hands letting me know
We share everything
Like your runny nose

THE MASTER-PIECE

All that cutting
Meticulous care
Glue
Just the right shapes
In just the right places
Glue
The utmost concentration
The required contemplation
Glue
You step away
Your masterwork through

And your priceless art
Perfectly stuck
to the kitchen table

Find Sandy’s book in the library!

Stark Raving Dad (2019)