Speak Poetry in San Mateo County

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)

Hilary Cruz Mejia

Hilary Cruz Mejia (she/her/ella) is a Latinx poet and activist from the coastal waters of Guatemala. Her work has appeared in MiGoZine (an imprint of Paloma Press), Portside Magazine, and in the Lesbians Are Miracles Magazine. Hilary’s transition to the U.S. as a lesbian, immigrant, and first-generation college student has been presented in her poetry where she hopes to encourage her readers to preserve the indigenous roots of the lands that were stolen. Outside of writing, she spends her time baking bagels and keeping on track with her homework. Hilary featured in readings hosted by the San Mateo County Office of Community Affairs and Redwood City Public Library. Follow her on Instagram @hilary_natasha.

Poem on Belonging

Esta noche sueño con dormir en los brazos de mi abuela, pero ayer ella preparó té para curarme el corazón.

quiero caer del cielo
—como las lágrimas que bañan nuestros ríos
sueño con recoger flores de sus manos
—como las heridas que le han xmarcado el rostro
dejándola poco a poco saborear el chocolate agridulce casero

—un trozo de jade que refleja la luz que
viene después de una tormenta de invierno tropical
en nuestra casa.

Tonight, I dream of sleeping in my abuela’s arms, but yesterday she prepared tea to heal my heart.

i want to fall from the sky
—like the tears that bathe our rivers
i dream of picking up flowers from her hands
—like the wounds that have marked her face
slowly letting her taste bittersweet homemade chocolate

—a piece of jade reflecting the light
that comes after a tropical winter storm
in our home.

Peter Neil Carroll

Peter Neil Carroll is an American writer and historian. He is the author of over 20 books, including Sketches from Spain (Main Street Rag, 2024), a lyric homage to the volunteers of the Lincoln Brigade, which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize; Talking to Strangers (Turning Point Press, 2022); This Land, These People: 50 States of the Nation (Press Americana, 2022), winner of the Prize Americana; Something is Bound to Break (Main Street Rag, 2019); Fracking Dakota: Poems for a Wounded Land (Turning Point, 2015); The Odyssey of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade: Americans in the Spanish Civil War (Stanford University Press, 1994), winner of the 1995 BABRA Nonfiction Award; and the memoir Keeping Time: Memory, Nostalgia, and the Art of History (University of Georgia Press, 1990). He is emeritus faculty in the Department of History at Stanford University, and is Poetry Moderator of Portside.

On September 16, 2024, after a brief illness, Peter passed away at the age of 80 surrounded by his family.

Ecopoems

APPALACHIA

The man at the river
with watery blue eyes tells me
how to find everything
he’s lost. Scratchy voiced, pointing
a crusty finger
like a needle knitting
through thickets,
he weaves the route:

first to Cousin Jack’s barn
near the yard where the collie sleeps
and across a narrow bridge
by the broken white fence
where Dave’s truck flew off
leaving his Jeannie
and the two baby girls. Turn
at the gray-stone post office.
Can’t miss it. Just opposite
Frank’s busted Ford that needs a motor,
he’s waiting for the government check.
Now if you see the church, fresh-
painted white, you’ve gone too far.
Turn back in Sharon’s drive,
she don’t ever mind, her boys
left these parts years ago.

Stories hang here, ghost-sheets
over the depleted woods. I stop
in a clearing to look at leaves fluttering,
swirling off sycamore, hickory, oak—
the way a child turns back to wave—
the mountain stripped at the ridge.

Copyright © 2012 by Peter Neil Carroll. This poem originally appeared in A Child Turns Back to Wave: Poetry of Lost Places (Hollywood: Poetry Press of Press Americana, 2012). Winner of the Prize Americana. Used with permission of the author.

THE MOUNTAIN TOP

Kayford, West Virginia

The mountain man points across a half-mile gap
to a hill where silver leaves shiver in strong gusts,
to family graves, centuries old, unreachable
without permission from the coal company.

Coal keeps the lights on, the company brags.
On in the funeral parlor, the mountain man says,
inviting me to visit what’s left of his hill since
the last dragline shovel devoured Appalachia.

Face smudged, boots soaked in sludge,
the old coal miner still hoists hammer
and pick to a rocky ledge, sets charges,
chokes on dust, coughs blood, dies hard.

And now comes the behemoth, ten stories high:
with a button’s push it swallows the mountain,
each bite 50,000 tons of sandstone and root,
heaves its maw into the hollows below.

Soil, forest, whatever’s above the black seams,
the company calls waste or overburden.
Inside the shovel the word is spoil, and once
the river’s sunk, fish killed, they speak of fill.

Taking the miner out of mining means 8 billion
pounds of explosives; 800 million acres
of forest; 500 mountains collapsed—leaving
behind yellow-painted signs saying,

HAZARD
DO NOT EAT BASS
BEYOND THIS POINT

Read Peter Neil Carroll’s poem, “Borscht.”

Find Peter’s books at the library!

This Land, These People (2022)
The Odyssey of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade (1994)
Keeping Time: Memory, Nostalgia, and the Art of History (1990)

Housing Leadership Council

In 2020, the Housing Leadership Council of San Mateo County in collaboration with San Mateo County Poet Laureate Aileen Cassinetto launched the first countywide Youth Poetry & Art Competition to encourage young people to explore their notion of home and to raise awareness of Affordable Housing Month. Given the continuing housing crisis in the Bay Area, this project is critical in bringing young people into the broader conversation of building healthy communities which includes access to adequate and affordable housing for everyone.

The theme in 2020 was “Home Could Be Here”; in 2021, the theme was “Growing Home” based on the 2020 winning poem by Abigale Wee. This project is aimed at empowering youth and supporting housing justice.

Watch “Growing Home” 2021 Youth Poetry & Art Competition, presented as part of the Housing Leadership Council of San Mateo County’s Affordable Housing Month program

Speak Poetry Anthology, Vol. 1

From the introduction to Speak Poetry Vol. 1:

When I was appointed Poet Laureate of San Mateo County, I was tasked with creating a poetry campaign to bridge and engage communities through the literary arts. My project, titled, “Speak Poetry,” is an ongoing conversation, where we’re given the opportunity to get to know people and the rhythm of their everyday lives.

Our county is singularly diverse, in terms of its geography and its demographics. And in this landscape, we have the space to bring to the fore the individual voices which make up our community. This anthology features 23 poets from around San Mateo County, ages 13-78, as they reflect on community—how they perceive it and/or themselves in it.

As an immigrant, I came to America with a luggage overpacked with poems and the unshakable conviction that I can be a poet here. I learned the most important lessons from being part of a community, that is, to be a poet is to help build, gather, restore. It’s about hope, that great unifier, which transforms lives, which fortifies communities, which changes the world.

Aileen Cassinetto

Joe Cottonwood

Joe has balanced his life as a home improvement contractor by day, author by night. He is from Maryland, imprinted Appalachian, educated midwestern, settled half a century under redwoods in La Honda, California. Joe is widely published around the world. Recently one of his poems was on display as a giant billboard in London, England. His latest book of poetry is Random Saints. Previous poetry books include Foggy Dog: Poems of the Pacific Coast. He is the author of many popular novels for adults and children and the award-winning memoir 99 Jobs: Blood Sweat and Houses.

Poem on Belonging

I AM

I am from Sibley Hospital
in Washington DC where
my mother bought me
like military surplus
at the end of World War Two.
I found the receipt
she’d saved for decades
in a dusty drawer
that made me sneeze:
“Delivery (normal) $48”
stamped PAID.

I am from B&O coal cars
pennies on the track
under rivers of black
as mountains were removed.

I am dust from hitchhiker’s thumb
blown from Appalachian lowland
to the foggy redwoods of California.

I safekeep my pennies with
a left-handed banker of curly black hair
who returns with compound interest
child and grandchild, again, again.

I am from lapping tongue of dog,
many whiskers, one spirit.

I am from the dripping faucet
the rot of old wood.
Call me, I’ll repair.

I am from stories
I can’t stop telling
words I can’t stop writing
including my own receipt:
“Exit (normal). No charge.”
Past due.

Find Joe’s books in the library!

San Mateo County Libraries

Civic Engagement

Co-Founder, La Honda Lit Nite

“If you’re driving Highway 84 and see this sign by the side of the road, it’s Lit Nite in La Honda, California. Once a month, locals gather out of the redwood forest into Sullivan’s Pub to read or recite before a live, friendly, and somewhat lubricated audience in the bar. Participants include building contractors, a gardener, a veterinarian, a high school student, a goat farmer, a singer, a teacher, a nuclear physicist, dropouts, published writers. They read from their own work, or they read from books. They read poetry, stories, rants, even a comic book. The event is hosted by myself (unknown novelist) and Terry Adams (unknown poet). We’ve been doing it for a couple of years now, last Wednesday of the month. It’s fun; it’s friendly; it brings us together; it lets us try out our voices and our ideas. It brings literature down to earth.”

—Joe Cottonwood, quoted in The New Yorker

Speak Poetry Anthology, Vol. 2

From the introduction to Speak Poetry, Vol. 2:

We are the language(s) we learned, the dragons we slayed, the monsters we defeated, the “gods we created”—we are all of our stories and every story read to us. We are also everything that we have forgotten. For this anthology, I’ve sent out a call to all poets in San Mateo County to submit poems on the theme, “childhood.” One reason is, to quote Robert Pinsky, to seek a vision of our future in the poetry of our past…”

According to a California Department of Finance study, there are 163,129 children between the ages of 0 and 17 in San Mateo County. If more than 57% are living with at least one foreign-born parent, how does a village support cultural literacy? What role can poetry play in a multilingual household? If more than 15% come from lower income families, or if more than 2% are homeless, how can our communities help in ensuring their future economic mobility? What possibilities can poetry possibly offer? More importantly, how does poetry change a life? From the 24 local poets featured in this anthology, it is my hope that we gain a deeper understanding of what childhood is, as well as everything that it can be.

Aileen Cassinetto

Nikki Christiansen

Nikki Christiansen’s poem “Bombed” was among those selected during a competition administered in the spring of 2010 by the Community College Humanities Association and sponsored by the Library of Congress as part of then U.S. Poet Laureate Kay Ryan’s project, “Poetry for the Mind’s Joy.”

Stephanie Dobler Cerra

Stephanie Dobler Cerra is a general writer at Accenture, supporting Google. She has a master’s degree in literature from Indiana University, specializing in Victorian Studies. Her poem, “Photograph of a Minamata Disease Victim,” appeared in The Pennsylvania Review (1986).

Poem

ORACLE

Dad out of state for work, mom got spooky
Shuffling her Tarot cards, gazing at the layouts
Pouring glass after glass from the big Gallo jug.

Crossing the unlighted living room I’d see her
Hunched over the Ouija board, planchette roaming
Mystifying Oracle, mother unfathomable.

At the dinner table she ignored us, lost somewhere
And trying to stay lost in her constant gloaming
Slapping our words away like biting insects.

Mystifying Oracle, we could have used you
Please explain our mother to us and where she went
Is she coming back? YES, NO, GOOD BYE?

We didn’t know how to ask her, or the Oracle, or anyone.
The family’s first rule for children: Don’t ask for anything.
What did we know of what our mother wanted?

She was a year away from writing poetry again.
I wonder if the planchette spelled that out for her
Or if it just left her, as we were left, in the dark.

That wasn’t right, but I can almost understand—
Now that poetry’s taken me by the wrist to the cleft
In the muse’s cave where heady vapors fume.

Now I wish we could join in this dimness
Our fingers delicately spread, my mother and I,
Scrying for what living rock can yield: Smoke. Water. Honey.