Lynnette Vega

Lynnette Vega is a native Californian. She has lived in New York City, New Jersey, and for the last 50 years in the beautiful town of La Honda in the Santa Cruz mountains. She is an artist and art therapist. Most of her work life has been centered around facilitating groups for older adults and those with disabilities.

Poem on Belonging

TOM & GRACIE, 1980*

(Written in the concrete remains of “Boots & Saddle” Lodge in La Honda)

In this small town
history is not
an abstract thing
happening to someone
you’ve never met
in a place
whose name you might recognize
from a 5th grade
geography class

History is composed
each day
by the people
whose lives
intersect with yours

The ones
you say hello to
when walking down
the street
those you meet
at the post office
or general store

Though
some say
the bad thing
about living in a small town
is that everyone
knows your business
The good thing
is that
many people care

And with that caring
the town can respond
as if it were not
made up of
many individuals
But instead
a solid mass-like body

And when
one part is in pain
the whole body aches
in sympathy
Allowing our lives
to touch
and not
look away.

I knew them enough
to say that
“I knew them”
which is to say
that through 7 and 12 years,
respectively,
I really didn’t know them at all

And, Tom shot Gracie dead

the other night
then sped away
and self-destructed
in what the newspapers called
a “spectacular crash”

Who were these people
and could anyone fathom
the convoluted love
that drew them together
and pulled them apart
literally dozens of times
Only to come
to an end one night
in rage and pain and death.

That happened
four nights ago
And yet the sound
of that bullet
keeps reverberating
through these streets
as if it were still
whizzing through
the air.

Copyright © 2019 by Lynnette Vega. This poem originally appeared in Speak Poetry Vol. 1. Used with permission of the author.

Cordelia Naumann

Cordelia Naumann is a digital project manager and information developer in San Bruno, California. Her first poetry collection, Ghostpins (2021), is an exploration of what it is to recover from the experience of losing her siblings to violent and tragic deaths, growing up with abuse and addiction, and a loss of self and friendship. As she explores these themes, she intertwines them with her observations of nature and the animals in and around her home — helping her heal and find beauty in longing.

Poems on Belonging

STORIES YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED IN 2020 (SAN BRUNO EDITION)

The Joneses across the street gave birth to their third child. Assigned female at birth, they are waiting for her to identify. They call her Horse. On occasion, Horse escapes, goes door-to-door, and forages for food.

People have figured out that the fireworks are just that, and why are there so many people outside the gun store?

Dog adoptions are up, as are people complaining about dog poop on Nextdoor. Your puppy turned seven this year.

We all got fit, or fat. We won’t know until next year when the Peloton pays for itself, or it doesn’t. Gen Z continues to negotiate time off to surf.

The number of crows has now matched or exceeded the world population.

The cat still doesn’t care.

BROZZI’S GOOD DEATH (THE HOPE OF NOW)

I wanted this to be beautiful for you.

In the photo I had of you, before I
gave away all my memories, your face is hidden,
arms outstretched to the right, sun on your olive skin.
Your dreadlocks fall around your downward gaze,
illuminated like light through the Catalpa.
And if I animate you in the time between
first light and dawn, your boyish smile and
sleepy brown eyes light up my morning,
even though you’re gone.

I missed you like you missed Reya, after Camilla took her away.
I watched your story like an endless election night, and my longing never waned.
I watched you search, fly, drain accounts, dent couches.
I hoped you would hold your daughter again.

Hopes for 2021 Include

The bat, understood
Glass slaughterhouses
Soft ground for red geraniums
Using the term scarcity in a sentence
Fewer planes, the return of the songbird

I know nothing more than you were reunited, a decade later. The last words
I read were: “She’s ok. By bedtime last night she was cool,” you said.
You all returned to Norway. Camilla took up singing again.

Two years later, you died in your sleep. They call that a good death.
I found a selfie of you on Instagram, electrodes attached to
your hard, lean, body. Why did you shave your beautiful dreads?
I don’t know how you died, on account of no account.
I let the mystery be.

Did your heart break, or finally unbreak, leaving nothing left of longing?
Maybe you came here to do what
you needed to, to grace us with your beauty,
and show us the depths of a father’s love.

Hopes Now Include

Let love lead me
Let the mystery be

Copyright © 2021 by Cordelia Naumann. Used with permission of the author.

Lois Fried

Lois Fried is an aspiring poet who loves being in the company of other inspiring poets. She is a member of the California Poetry Society, a regular open mic reader of the Belmont California Library Poetry Group, and Poetry Nights Online (formally, Café Zoe Open Mic, Menlo Park). Lois has served as a judge for Youth Poetry Contests held in San Mateo County. She has coordinated poetry reading events with the Belmont and Foster City Libraries, and the Friends of the Redwood City Public Library. Lois is a member of the Brenham Heritage Museum (her hometown), and the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. Lois spent over thirty-five years in the Human Capital Management industry, as a manager, speaker, leader, and trainer. She earned her BS degree in Business from Excelsior University in Albany, NY. So Great the Journey is her first book of poetry, published in 2023. She was appointed San Mateo County Arts Commissioner in 2024. Lois lives with her family in Foster City.

Chloe Chou

Chloe Chou is the 2022-23 Daly City Youth Poet Laureate and the 2022-23 South San Francisco Youth Poet-in-Residence. A South City resident, she is currently a freshman at Westmoor High School in Daly City. Her passions are coding and writing. In her free time, she likes to make mixtapes! In 2020, she published a book called The Phaeton Complex, which is available on Amazon and in the Peninsula Library System. Chloe was appointed California Youth Poet Laureate in 2024.

Ecopoem

EARTH

The screaming of birds
In the morning used to be
Songs. I wake up and the sunlight
Through the window is hazy,
There is news playing on the television 
Downstairs as nations begin to fall into chaos.

As the planet heats up, so does the ocean.
As coral reefs absorb the carbon dioxide from the air,
     — the air that we have polluted with our own greed, our own wrongdoings — 
they are blanched white and the ocean begins to die.
Fish and other sea life are netted by the millions by fishers
With the passing of each minute, extinction unfolds globally.

Well, the sun begins to fall over the edge of the horizon,
you see. So we chase it. We chase it all the way to the edge
until the sun has fallen and the stars have fallen too.
When we sink into the ocean we will find nothing but
the bloated bodies of fish, when we try to find our way
through the land, we will find nothing but impossible drought and wildfires.

and earth begins to split at the seams.

Copyright © 2022 by Chloe Chou. Used with permission of the author.

Read Chloe’s poems on identity and belonging. Read Chloe’s chapbook, The Long Way Home, published by the South San Francisco Public Library.

Allen Bustos

Allen Bustos is a poet, spoken word and hip hop artist, lyricist, social justice advocate, and educator through the veteran nonprofit Pin@y Educational Partnerships. He is also a member of the San Mateo County Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Commission, engaging in policy advocacy work in support of culturally-responsive programs and resources for system-impacted youth. He is currently working on a hip hop album, “Living Ancestors,” which addresses healing, trauma, spirituality, social justice, and identity formation, as well as a podcast to highlight the Filipina/o/x American experience in the arts, education, and other issues surrounding health and equity.

Nellie Wong

Nellie Wong is the daughter of Chinese immigrants, and in her poetry and through her community activism, she confronts social problems such as racism, sexism, and labor issues. Her collections of poetry include Dreams in Harrison Railroad Park (1977), The Death of Long Steam Lady (1986), Stolen Moments (1997), and Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner (2012). With Merle Woo and Mitsuye Yamada, Wong co-authored 3 Asian American Writers Speak Out on Feminism (2003). She is one of the founding members of the writing collective Unbound Feet, and her poems have been installed in public sites in the San Francisco area.

Lauren Ito

Lauren Ito is an American Gosei (fifth generation person of Japanese ancestry) UX research leader, poet, and community organizer committed to advancing equity through art and design.

As an artist and organizer Lauren delves into the tensions inherited within diasporic experiences, spanning explorations of American concentration camps, political agency, and the genealogy of home. Lauren’s work has been featured by The San Francisco Public Library, The Seattle Times, Japanese American National Museum, and Nomadic Press. She is currently the Artist in Residence for the National Japanese American Historical Society. As a 2022-2023 San Francisco Arts Commission Artist Grantee, Lauren is working on a collective “love letter to ancestors: past, present and future,” convening Nikkei poets and visual artists to collaboratively create artistic works.

Lauren founded Political Inheritance, an arts exhibition and poetry performance series exploring experiences—passed down in cultures and families—that shape Asian and Pacific Islander communities’ relationships with United States political systems. Her latest intergenerational poetry show, ILLUMINATE, drew more than 2,000 attendees nation-wide.

Keana Aguila Labra

Keana Aguila Labra (they/them/she/her) is a Cebuana Tagalog Filipinx genre- and genderfluid poet, editor, and newsletter writer in diaspora residing on stolen Ohlone Tamyen land. She works to provide a safe literary space for underserved and underrepresented communities as co-Editor-in-Chief of literary magazine, Marías at Sampaguitas and co-Founder of the BIPOC/LGBTQIA+ focused independent publishing house, Sampaguita Press. She is the author of the chapbooks, No Saints (Lazy Adventurer Publishing, 2020) and Mohilak (Fahmidan Co. & Publishing, 2021) and Kanunay (Self-Published, 2022).