if you're interested our books are on sale at the canter fourteen ninety five still get all year and we want to thank the black dog cafe for hosting this event they have a great menu and they'll be recent writing workshop series is part of silat arabic word for connections a program also offering community dialogues for the arab and muslim communities and fostering local creativity and self expression as well as investigating existing us we love the being able to you know kind of interact with all kinds of different people and it's just so nice to see so many people that we don't normally see in our events obviously i'm going to make a pitch please stay in touch with us you can you know find information about  s on our table back there and of course on facebook and twitter and instagram and you know just on the internet you can google us well lets see since i don't really need to know too much i will i will just say that you know we kind of pretty much have two major programs we have our journal which you'll see back there too yeah so we've got copies of that if you're interested and you know the readership and the writer ship i guess is you know local national and international and we're really proud of that  we also have a major film festival that happens here and we just finished off our last edition of that to great success really really amazing movies and as someone who just kind of moved here recently even though i've known about the organization for a long time i was just really really amazed by the selection and i had a really great time so you know maybe you can catch that next time so thank you to st paul minn act thank you to black dog for having us here we're really excited about that and i need to let you all know that you're being videotaped so you can all you know like wave to the camera right there just say you know and also please turn off your cell phones during readers that's you know kind of nice of you and so ok so are reading tonight mainly as coming out of our writing workshop series which is something that i've been working really closely with here and tonight we've got two of our facilitators featured readers we've got kathy had add robert curry me and then and we've also got i believe six of our writers who have been participating in those workshops really pretty steadily so it's just really amazing to be able to have them present their work you know whether coming out of the workshops or on their own they've just you know really kind of stuck together and have formed a really amazing group that i i think will just become really great writing group in the twin cities and you know hopefully lead to more readers and writers and publishing and everything so yeah let's give it up  you let's see i'll just say something very quick about northern spark again because i'm really excited about it i've been working with that project a lot you know the union depot is a block and a half over there and pretty soon it's going to be a fully functioning train station it's a really beautiful building and they're taking the summer to sort of you know bring a lot of people in through this really interesting all night arts festival that's happening which is you know a lot more like kind of wandering through a peculiar odyssey of an art exhibit that like an art fair you know are familiar with the festival from the previous years so got a really interesting exhibit we're going to be doing some street art on the underpass of the union depot you'll be able to kind of wander over to our space and it's kind of evoking you know tahrir square or other arab revolutionary spaces in the arab world you'll be able to come and actually take a stand still designed by cairo artists chicago  who have designed arab graffiti stencils and you can come and use those sort of as a gesture of solidarity to you know sort of the challenges and democratization that's been happening out there so we would really love it for you to come on june eighth and we would really love it if you can try to support us in any way we have an indie go go campaign that you know we're trying to raise a few thousand dollars a couple thousand dollars to bring an artist from egypt actually which would be a really amazing thing she would come and participate in the festival and give a talk and we have some really great prizes and other packages that you can actually take if you donate to this project so you know take a look at it will have some like i pads back there with you know a blurb in our page and stuff so and now let me get started with a reading you i'm going to be reading some of my own work tonight and and i also thought i might bring in you know some writing by much more famous popular cultural people that we might not sort of think of as arab americans you know maybe they're heavy on the american i don't know we'll see what you think but i'll just start off with this one well they're lyrics you know they're not it's not a poem but we'll see how it comes across the poem and i think you'll be able to tell who this is by within the first stan ladies up in here tonight no fighting no fighting we got the refugees up in here no fighting no fighting oh baby when you talk like that you make a woman go mad so be wise and keep on reading the signs of my body and i'm on tonight you know my hips don't lie and i'm starting to feel  baby oh boy i can see your body moving half animal half man i don't don't really know what i'm doing but you seem to have a plan my will and self restraint have come to fail me now fail now see i'm doing what i can but i can't so you know that's a bit hard to explain i never really knew that she could dance like this she makes a man want to speak spanish  oh baby when you talk like that you know you got me hypnotized so be wise and come on read the signs of my body i'm on tonight see my hips don't lie and i'm starting to feel you boy come on let's go real slow  like this is perfect oh you know i'm on tonight and my hips don't lie and i'm starting to feel it's right the attraction the tension maybe like this is perfect oh no fighting no fighting i forgot one phrase i never really knew that you could dance like this she makes a man want to speak lebanese so you know that's one of our lebanese american that's the persons within our entourage you could say you know that's a lebanese american writer performer you might want to check out she's on you tube and all over the place  but before i introduce our first reader i'd like to read some of my own work the first poem is to my sister who is not here she's really far away you'll see where i couldn't move slow enough in the waves that come on a poly to keep our walk back from ending a mirror and anyway we were busy talking slipping past each other swell of each ti the miracle be walking in water immersed in that serves so fine salty and real low the world we did it we walked into water up to our face looking at you skipped a no i looked like you you stubbed your knee on a rock imagine how close and foreign as the sovereign world underwater it let us touch a while without occasion it was the matter between us it's very air is water and taken in and doses too rich for our palates but perfect as a proxy for our very clothes and for our affection the slipped off sleeve the breeze found underwater as the hugging leg of a pair of jeans the current the breeze a sibling verifying that that first sibling so very real i felt the ocean on my arms for hours after and you at their length and wished i'd performed an act of magic to bury our little walk more fittingly have warded back and clapped my feet like they were under attack to reveal a lay of melon send it to a  flowers wrapped around my ankles a perishable totem from maui and the pacific to you and to me to be able to give that to you there in the torpid wave desert and your life and hawaii and when we meet up later in life the current flowed and to blow the breeze has its own tends to do in the past blew me and you walked in water thought one more choice for you and then i'm going to introduce our first reader  one on the wrong side of the tracks from strife where the wild life is a fix of a strange light bright but gray like today i bright but gray like today is how is it fair how's it fair or whether only holds me together i don't know these streets i don't know these streets i always see this park i always see this park i don't know this part of me of this wild life does the wild life thrive or does it just survive is there a love is there a love that's on him and that's what will have some of thank you jenna i don't know how to say your last name so long that jenna was born and raised in new york city and in a red pickup truck named betsy with the name and something you like to do for fun it will help me feel less nervous so i also have one of my best friends here who has a babysitter waiting for me to yeah exactly they're enjoying each other so much it's so good so my one of my best friends has a babysitter waiting on me to finish reading so i'm going to interrupt you now and knowledge that we're on native lands we're on initial land arabs know something about land and our connections to it so i want us to all acknowledge that we're on someone else's land and i also want to say that my first workshop that i went to was a fabulous day with andrea soft and that morning i heard that a dear friend of died and here we are and i'm thinking of brandon and i'm also thinking of this amazing town that i live in i work here in downtown and the bridge was recently renamed the freedom to marry bridge and we're the first state in the midwest to say it's ok for same sex people to get married and were at the end of love is the law week how awesome is that so i've been bragging to everybody and my canadian friends are like yeah good for you eight years a little late but it's fine go ahead and be excited about it and  i just want to acknowledge that a few days ago mark carson black a man was shot on the lower west side of new york city where i'm from for being gay and so i love people getting to deeply commit to each other forever i've done that with many people and i love my life for that and until we eliminate heterosexism homophobia racism classism at the  root we're still under attack so i love the celebrating love and we have a a long ways to go with all of us here with poetry so on that note i'm going to read you some stuff take this poem my love and fold it fold it again wait unfold it hold it open to catch words tumbling from my mouth put it up to  put it up to your face put it up to my mouth be safe come home to me tonight i love you you're my favorite i like you i like you i like you i like you ok now fold it  come home to me tonight i love you again be safe come home to me tonight i love you now no one told me when i came out of the closet at the age of thirteen as a man hating lesbian teenager who only listened to women's music spelled with a y read books by women spelled with a y dressed all in lavender and purple and skipped school to play guitar and write poetry that i was taking a stand against something that wanted my love to die i came out to live to let my leg hair grow to love queers to dance to enjoy my body to connect myself to audrey lord parker and june jordan a dream rich  so a couple years ago i heard about this awesome guy who mizzen actually just brought to be their first writer in residence and i heard about him and i was like you know he and i should be friends so i called them up ourselves which is great and he and i wrote a poem about being me being jewish him not being jewish both of us being arabs how does that work he's palestinian oh my goodness what's the deal can we be you know the same stage at the same time so we wrote this poem and this is he's not here he's back in new york city and so i kind of rework some things so i could still tell the story without him being next to me physically but always with me met yet crescent of butterscotch colored sand loops at the southern tip of lagoon protected from the crashing atlantica by a barrier of rocks that catch all the violence of the ocean slickly when it suited  miniature waves and teenagers play football among the lava clad women making sand castles with their babies on a steep central island which evaporates and really emerges with the tides it never looked like the same beach twice over the days that i was there silver at night the water was lie in the rising morning my greening pink flamingos land here on the way from spain to sub float between wall and shore the sea water makes my throat ache and burn my feet dangle like seaweed reaching for a toehold i'm thirsty displaced again and again by the push and pull of the swells what's underfoot keeps shifting if i try to stand bitter salt chokes me invades my nose i'm torn up by the roots what i love is the only thing possible to give myself over to the waves let them lift me and set me down at the shore that is always changing what is the name of that essential thing that seeped from our pores and left its fine white powder on the skin of our days here in minnesota you can see what happens when you're a gate salt rises insistent memories pushing up through a multitude of hands making an impenetrable cross that bankrupts the factory farms and poisons the corn meant for export on our history or star there is a road from mali to morocco where a thousand camels at a time carried sacks of salt by mules of gold tattered red cloths filled with the dates twenty five days in and at the edge of the true desert is a city of where the roofs are made of stitched camel hides and the walls even the walls of the mosque are made out of blocks of salt do you remember we have been here before you and i and all of us lifting in scraping our hands on it skin growing red from irritation of so much harsh truth blood the singing from the act of eating each other's stories you sprinkle a pinch of it on my bread i let the sparking grains of its wheat and your fruit do you remember we walked all the way from the lot of between this a hell in the sahara to learn this that we can build cities out of what we know i have no desert sand to give you the greens i grew up with coated my teeth my dad walking with me on the coney island boardwalk would depress fingers into the ocean and stick his fingers in my mouth taste this it's where you're from look out over the water on the other side is africa my name was not in a way sis of dates and warm sand through people's nervous lips came johannah joan j m joanne even john so i just love that you couldn't pronounce tell them if it's the scandinavian german norwegian lips of the midwest were nervous they didn't understand my questioning mind my hairy legs my own hesitating arm that shot up oh i want to discuss history philosophy and i was always ready to dance the sounds of my papa who'd travel the hudson river gathering fish he sold on a stake in a stand the european jews would let us pray with them wash with them work with them so we traveled through the rhythms of pomegranate seeds and sweet mint tea i have no stories of deserts of always uscis fringed with dates but for the moon over damascus for the shimmer of a hot wind for the brown ha of your hand i will trade you this coastline these five greatest lakes the rough ridges where each tide leaves its debris overlapping arched footprints of waves the moist breeze carrying the scent of new york out to the sea the gray line of buildings above the green line of rain bordered language on the lips of every hopeful woman child the lot of a lost daughter of the coast do you remember we know what sand knows that grain beside grain we are infinite that in our embrace th outposts of conquers sink and smother and lie abandoned how we grind down the edges of countries do you remember we have weight we have purpose whole continents of a new land in each other's hearts this is where we have gathered there are no borders no deportations weaving their tracks across this poem their only our hands and strong in the light of this fire dipping from the silver at night the water lilac in the rising morning passing cops to quench our thirst donna next i'm going to present to you molly carson or sorry carlson has a b a in communication studies from a s u but was raised and currently lives in minnesota she's lived in cairo egypt and travels when it rains it rains and blood red clouds descend and shake the earth hope hides in caves and shakes in fear yet here she lies with open eyes as fragile as a butterfly sweet angel come and take the pain bring life to burdened hearts again and let us never cease to see that in our children hope roams free of tribal ties and politics of sticky bombs and presidents for when it rains the fire comes the sky's burned down while hearts burned up for all the sodden atrocities of all the deaths our children see we must try hard to bring again the renewal of hope to the children of men my next poem i actually wrote while i was living in egypt in two thousand and eight which was before the revolution and i was recently back again in january and it really struck me that even though so much has changed it seems that everything remains the same the dates are hanging from the trees and i would reaching for the fruit now find my hands have taken root in self defense against the mutiny and old man fights to swim the sea of inhumane humanity of dogs and cats and flies and bats and history brought to its knees my feet are set to sing a tune but when i walk refused to move instead they wander room to room in the solace robbing ministries and i i only aim to please find me the quickest route to leave but i see the metro has collapsed with disregard to the best laid plans of power and money hand in hand to rid the arid desert land of burgeoning democracy the dates are hanging from the trees and i when reaching for the fruit now find my limbs have taken root in self defense against bureaucracy the dates are hanging from the trees and i when reaching for the fruit now find my soul has taken root in self defense against desponden and this last poem is one that is about just being a white converts and how it can be difficult it's called stupid white g skip hop skip she hadn't wanted this still the blue skies shown silly little white girl who's going to take you home yet in the face of prying eyes she flies a walking contradiction of white skin and blue eyes and all american traitor with a headscarf an apple pie stupid white girl did you think this would fly skip hop skip she never bargained for this homeland security prone brainwashed white girl this place ain't your home this is a land of pundits and secret drones islamophobia and wiretap phones she's a terrorist wife all right guilty by denial she's a guy just the shiny white authentic islamic apologist tell me white girl what do you make of this explain it white girl why are you a terrorist skip hop skip she hadn't signed up for this existing all alone not quite white girl where exactly is your home she's arab by association but american by dislocation and a wanderer by divine vocation she's deep in her belief seeking praying kneeling gr reaching placing her forehead to the ground earnest a white girl stop to look around your dangerous white girl because no one can tear you down skip hop skip she never wanted this but finally she knows silly white girl no one will take you home silly white girl they can't take away your home melissa i'm going to present to you william noor william was born in nazareth to a palestinian catholic family william came to the u s in one nine hundred seventy four at the age of sixteen and graduated from augusta and college in sioux falls with a degree in english and education thank you my first born is to my beloved it is my home did you ever love me you sent for me you live lured me in from far away roused me was stories carried by the spice caravan this regali your unmatched beauty your radiance your riches reciting your peaks and your valleys you say third within me a hunger inflamed me with desire all woman at the edge of the desert sand you sent me sweets infused with the scent of rose water laced with orange blossom promised me milk and honey and by the sea at the edge of the desert sand i saw you first behind a veil of mist rising from the jordan shimmering in the lawit of dawn an illusion of the divine you were bent down washing your hair in the waters of the galilee you may not have seen me standing on the opposite bank of the jordan but i watched the sway in your hips between haifa and dia and as you attended the sunset over mount carmel you did not invite me in and i waited my heart pounding motionless i waited i waited to hear you say come in m beloved but it was too late to escape my fate my destiny you were just lying there in repose in the dust at the edge of sand and at once i became your lover appointed your worship or anointed hypnotized baptized to your jordan and rising on the other side i cleave my body to yours and i was instantly home i sacrificed myself at your altar joining you in the dance of countless ages plucked your olives pressed your grapes tended you she kept your fires but a day is like a thousand years and a thousand years are like a day and noon saw him standing there the new lover at the garden gate wild my joy and my pain did you not love me back and who will i be without you destined to live apart hide the pain of a broken heart let it be known but i loved you more than life itself if you ever see a man in his wall a broken heart in one hand and a handful of dirt in the other shed a tear and send him on his way it was you i'm going to reduce kathy had dad next you know she's a big part of course the arab american writing community here let me just kind of read what i've got here and say a couple more things kathy had out as a lebanese american writer teacher and community organizer and co founder of ms know where she served as our artistic and executive director for twelve years kathy has received numerous awards and grants from the your own foundation of minnesota state arts board archibald busch leadership fellowship and three playwright center many voices fellowships she's had several plays produced in the twin cities including a staged reading of with love from gaza in her media arts the arabs in my head at theater moves new eyes festival and minnesota and she's worked full time as a public school teacher in one thousand nine hundred one that's kathy had add she's been a great part of the workshops too i think everyone who's read so far has been in your workshop which was very recent and you know it was just really wonderful memoir writing and we really appreciated that too so thank you very much let's welcome kathy up knows a huge part of my life when we first invision a place for arab writers this is this is basically what it what it is and i'm so honored right now to be able to read on the stage for all those years when i was directing i really couldn't be a part of any of the programs because i was too busy organizing them so this is really a dream come true to finally be able to have the space and the time to be able to write and this whole writing workshop series was really amazing  there was a series of workshops me five or six six different workshops with master you know writers including robert crimi who's sitting right back there is going to be reading later joe qadi who is one of my heroes and one of the first actually arab americans i met here in the twin cities who who published food for our grandmothers the first ever american anthology so the twin cities has an amazing place for writers and for arab writers i'm honored to be here so thank you i lead a workshop as well have said but i also participated in in several of the workshops as well so so i'm here to read some of the things that i wrote while i was a participant in the workshop and actually a piece that i wrote before the workshop that i wanted to share from my plays author of the olive oil warrior which was that last year now this monologue that i want to read for you is actually one that wasn't in the play it was one that i wrote that i really loved but we ended up cutting it when i rewrote the ending so this is really the first time that this monologue is going to be good and if you didn't see the play which  is wearing the shirt there it's basically the story of an arab american school teacher turned superhero that's the short of it but this is this is one of her monologues when i was a child i used to love to watch the grasshoppers in the summer on long hot days i would sit on the step outside the kitchen next to the yellow marigolds and observe them clung to the dark green siding of my parents suburban home their threadlike legs bent soles neatly against skinny grasshopper bodies the long antennas stuck out from alien looking heads little black shiny eyes bulged i marveled at how when one burst they could jump from the grass high into the air stick to the wood and then like magic disappear again i imagine that they lived in a family with cousins and uncles and aunts grandparents they had a little house somewhere where their mom was cooking grasshopper food in the kids were coming home after playing their grasshopper games to sit at a little grasshopper table i wish i could jump like they did grass house sidewalk gone one sunny summer day as i was quietly watching them this jumping family the neighbor boy nelson came over i didn't really know petey he was older than i was so it was strange he was in the yard what you doing vicki nothing just watching the grasshoppers he didn't say a word he just looked at the place where the grasshoppers were resting their antenna twitching eyes bulging probably thinking about dinner or maybe going to play a grasshopper game and he lifted his big foot and stomped it hard crushing them to death their grasshopper juice ran down the side of the house particles from their bodies stuck to the wood he wiped his shoe on the sidewalk laughed and left it was as if i had witnessed a massacre i understood the world that day and my place in it if p t and his big white tennis shoe could casually stomp life on the side of my house a place he did not belong a place where i was safe and lives that i protected where was my safety how would the future be for me who was like a grasshopper small and helpless i wondered what it was that makes one person see a beautiful life and another find pleasure in ending it ever since then i've been trying to take some of that power back to stop the p t s of the world sneakers in midstream and now that i'm older and i have these powers now that i'm the olive oil warrior if he won't give up the power himself i will take it from him thank you offer for being here and thanks for sticking around thanks for your attention and you know just are participating here tonight i have a couple things i was going to say that i kind of forgot to say in the beginning and you know one is that if you're interested in taking an arabic class mizzen is offering them i can't remember the exact date that we start but we have information back there we have some pamphlets that you see lana waving around over there and so you know we've got really excellent instructors on the classes are small and everybody's had a lot of really good things to say about them so if you're interested in that at all just check check it out with us back there another thing i want to say to you for your as far as participation goes you know our journal is accepting submissions right now for a food themed edition and the kind of theme that we're calling it eating the other and it has a lot to do with food appropriation kind of you know where culture and food kind of run into risk or adventure or transgression so if you are interested in working on that theme in any way and you know might have something that would be in some way relevant or related to the arab american and or muslim community we would really love to read your work we have you know an editorial board and you know we really do take the work seriously and we'd love to review or work and see what you have to say and maybe include it in our next issue so i think we also have a paperback there that describes the so we have a paperback there describing the call for submissions if you're at all curious please check that out and yeah and also like i say check out our northern spark project too and if you're interested please do support the project th donation we've got some really great and interesting prizes so all that is back there please check it out after our evening is over so for again i've got a few other things r right so you know where it's just the three of us on this and i really appreciate the two of them and all that they do let's see if you can recognize this lost in a dream i don't know which way to go if you are all that you seem then baby i'm moving away too slow i've been a fool before wouldn't like to get my love caught in the slam and or how about some information please straight up now tell me do you really want to love me forever oh oh oh or am i caught in a hit and run straight up now tell me is it gonna be you and me together or are you just having fun time standing still waiting for some small clue i keep getting chills when i think your love is true i've been a fool before wouldn't like to get my love caught in the slam and door how about some information please straight up now tell me do you really want to love me forever or am i caught in a hit and run straight up now tell me is it going to be you and me together or you just having fun you're so hard to read you play hide and seek with your true intentions if you're only playing games i'll just have to say but i did do you love me to do you love me do you love me do you love me i've been a fool before and wouldn't like to get my love caught in a slamming door are you more than hot for me or am i a page in your history book i don't mean to make demands but the word and the deed go hand in hand how about some information please i've been a fool before wouldn't like to get my love caught in a slamming door are you more than hot for me or my age and your history i don't mean to make demands but the word and the deed go hand in hand how about some information please anyone know who that was by any chance syrian american don't forget before i introduce our next three workshop readers in our  facilitator robert crimi i've got a couple of poems of my own to present for you these all come from a project i've been working on incidentally about the great lakes region and i've been working on that for a really long time  it's sort of exploring identity place and how natural geography is a really big part of cultural identity looking for kind of other ways to identify that sort of parallel race and class and gender and these really predominant axes for our identity and i'm sort of using the great lakes region to talk about geography as a way that we relate to each other and to place and into ourselves i don't arrive at the place arrives and starts a fire i am alive i've been here a vigilant while i wait on the risers by the shoreline we don't arrive i don't know thing arrives places arrive and start fires where there is some sign of life i am alive i am alive lake of the clouds in a boat finding superior through the carp's mouth porcupine pounds porcupine mountains in a ship stern see me now see me now set to burn there hemlocks and maples apostle islands swimming by dried out pasty crusts and mines toms burned down cafe treading water i am alive i am alive serves as fodder for kindred places st marie twins test boundaries crossing the rapids of the st mary's locks kneedeep in the terrain and name come to me come to me stoke the flames of their emigration the place arrives places arrive collecting gather the fabled excess of the sum of parts not discrete no idea not us creatures or ghosts or the weather a cordless power it's not alive they're not alive a clapper averse to big bang land bound down fire bound down boardwalks like fire escapes and there you are you've been placed with all your life you are alive you are alive the place arrives places arrive where there is a sign of life you are on fire next poem is about a place that some people may know called to harbors on the north shore losing myself in the man bragging to friends or family or brag to me motorboats coming in out the mist and fog like names returning to relatives a wallop like this punches on call back to me a sibling this giddy no cooler a dusk since i can't remember brag to me pulling the truck up and reeling the boat in letting the fish go always the one that got away and i would marry you family just to be able to brag to mrs sinking the sunset between the dishes and stacking them next to the tasa night ships passing the window sill on taco night with smoked fish a fly this noisy joke boy a tale this tall yanking the young one against the wall and measuring the cowlick boy clears the silverware collects all the agate rock seen through the screen door the two harbor skyline sundown up to or dock where me and mine lingered till dark not a ship to tear between the two of us just to ride the share one foot driven into the lake and the other pensive as a passenger in the last t asleep under themselves like children the tourist and work vista of lake superior remember that livelihood forever a catch this lucky hugs sand gathered out in rows and dog doing laps in the water and the city already game the morning haze and it's court seagulls and the day before last snooze park and ride park and ride the little lot in the water quiet and untidy the sun checks off the sears tower like a pupil entranced glanced askance and bright black glasses up inside you'd see it this little pull off and put michigan in the picture at the same off balanced instant looking out with the clouds count skimming the lake and having horizontal go the periphery can be so capacious when you trace it never even seeing the living in the loop blake rides go to work on its own three legs south of itself combing the beach for example or tempering the wabash avenue runoff with the glacial grooming city life to nature this is the archetype of diversity even always seeing the lake through the saliva thanks twenty year old palestinian will be starting at u of m in the fall she teaches a poetry and writing class to adults with mental and physical disabilities in writing sarah is exploring how to put voice to her range of experiences so please welcome  ok the first so i'm going to read is called palestine i wrote this a while back and i've only shared it with a couple of people the same story but a new sadness has entered the streets of silent prisoners prisoners scraping stolen lands for a piece of themselves for a piece in themselves a perfect line of white unlike the doves  sky a line of bodies lucky enough to be found under shattered homes tears pregnant with hate tears forming into the rocks that make small fists clenched brock's rejected my machine guns carried by pernicious hands the very hands that raped and killed a virgin blood dressing the city that was once dressed in olive branches green with hope now red with grief to understand this place you must understand its howells its agony you must understand why we unfold our prayers from our tongues praying to unfold every occupied corner while new corners of prisoner mouths have dried up and formed a maze of brains and broken bones through the birth of christ small ears covered with the bloody hands of a mother who wears havoc as on night gown but she wears that like bones because there is no choice it will be the goddamn gown they muffle her in even the clouds are split in half and between the gaps lie missiles usual scenery streets with names unpronounceable places visited by memory this is what happens when the home lives with then rather than living within the home you the next one i actually wrote last night it's really raw and unfinished but it just happens to conveniently fall in with the theme if you see something say something so i thought it was really cool  worked out so without further ado i present to you if you see something say something on my tongue lie horizontal lines of scars in the shape of my teeth but my tongue has limited capacity you see so instead i started to swallow my words like needles dipped in honey this didn't work well my windpipe irrevocably gave up paint the tiles oral diarrhea involuntary personal words spill and i lay there like pavement pizza arguing with the worms on saturday april sixth i collected my disorderly pile of words and held them with mascara stained fingers i place them under the sleeves of my share blouse and waited till i got home to tremor them out again i've been casting my glory reality with innocence but my troubles have molested me and chose a body to carry me and later that night i heard the familiar footsteps on my staircase they complemented my barely existing slow paul's pulsation naked and compass by the words i kept if you see something say something but she didn't my angel she took my words and i watched her lay like a butterfly sporadically living in an ashtray filled with year old cigarette butts co owners of words and secrets she now carries in the skin folds of her fragile body while i carry the rest between the heavy lead hairs of my every blink or a minder that if you see something say something to try to read the bio here some handwriting so i might have trouble i'm sorry but you say one was born in samara having trouble in laos she's lived in paris france and grew up in one and this is going to be is a multi talented artist with a background in fashion design makeup event planning music and the fine arts she's highly active in the community with a passion for connecting people and promoting the arts in several languages and can be sp thanks around for coming and i want to say thanks to ms now for these writing workshops i was privileged to attend a joke workshop and a cafe had a workshop and unfortunately i couldn't find some of the pieces from the workshop i wanted to share so i have a piece and i'm sharing and and unfortunate couldn't attend robert crimi said i wanted to so and i'm not used to being in front of a mike reading poetry maybe singing but  forty so i've got one piece and it's short but i want to do one really quick one just so you guys can so roses are red violets are blue i like and so should you right i tend to like to write about life and death and travelling and earth so this is sort of my peace and this is kind of from trip from morocco so red sand clay i feel you through the crevices of my warm comforting gentle conforming to my feet as i press on you burdening you with my weight mass accommodating like a guest in your home you keep giving as i keep taking i indulging in the richness you behold for giving generous maternal you forgive me you vast and powerful greater than all my adam's stronger than my mind faster than my wit controlling my movements as i float above and through you one soft stop after another toes crevasses filling with warmth exhaust excuse me exhaustion contentment my emotions and motions dissipates slowly sluggishly stops but you continue infinitely that's it you know the writing the work the writing workshops have been a really interesting and encouraging experience i think for ms now because it's probably in a lot of really different people from the arab american muslim community here in the twin cities so i'm glad to see so many different people express things she finds too confusing part of her current undertaking is to develop her skills as an order while blending somali and english she thinks herself charming and hilarious in the somali language often making herself like me too but rarely does that humor translate into english it will be magical when she learns to fuse the two languages together seamlessly let's confiscated her mother's hair she still rooted in hope with cold winters making her wish she was just passing through but the grayness is a soft for her wounds to heal she wears heavy clothes to cover up all of her scars saving for the american dream she found she fantasizes she has fantasies her fantasies have narrations in so molly with english subtitles too old to forget her mother tongue to last to last who pass through this land not all wanders are lost she tells herself here to stay even though her mind is stuck a bear the nomad now has a place to sleep but stays awake at night in tall towers scrubbing the floors of business centers when they look at her they see here and there half of her radical hair waves at them the other half remains covered she's the new the old everything and nothing we have one more guest tonight this will be our second workshop facilitator we had kathy had out earlier and now i'm going to be really pleased to present robert curry me you know another really accomplished and  really interesting interdisciplinary performance artist and writer so his bio robert fareed curry me critically acclaimed poet journalist educator tragicomic genius created the only live comedy cooking show featuring satire storytelling and food hosted by iranian guatemalan cook how do you say this robert mero of course miracle scenario this alter ego is cooked for over hell of thousands of people in twenty eight days of good energy a call an airy transmedia interactive experience in response to type two diabetes in at risk communities of color which is which has arizona state university studying the effectiveness of robert's performance platform pedagogy on behavioral change relating to health and food robert is new is now the artistic director of the people's cook an organization that nourishes audiences through virtually live artistic and call an area experience as we're really glad to have robert with us and let's give him a  i am trying to do a set i have changed my set to fit everybody else's poems before me so if you find it it's like you know a little highlights hide and seek thing there is bad language so i want to ok here we go i don't know if i've read this before them is nothing a book five i was missing something really bad but when i watched have harry and her everyone said not to be so sad landed there's no yarmulke or turbans or other other headdress is they said i was pissed off when they said head dresses i know i said but they  change i'm going to be reading something for you that i've never been read before you're hearing a lot of me because i was in indonesia i was surrounded is the most muslims i've ever been in my life i grew up in a primarily catholic area with a muslim father who was shia so it was a very different experience then i think the majority of people i meet i think still going to indonesia was even another one like i went to the third largest mosque and that was across the street from one of the oldest catholic churches so i was like oh mind blown away so but the other thing is i watched a lot of movies and i happened to watch this movie made by ben affleck about iran it was tough i did it and i say to all of you that do not like a movie watch it for free somewhere and then talk about it and here i am going to do this so this is called argo and it's all true this is based on a true story the iranians pissed off at the cia for mossad x removal hired ben affleck to make a movie about historical events so that the cia could not feel so upset for meddling in the affairs of countries for the last fifty or so years everything was spliced reimagined pieced together in the name of peace later ben affleck approached the chill lanes because he loves that latin lusciousness so much and he thought he would be perfect to play a chilean hero offered millions of dollars to play the protagonist that downed pinochet this is based on a true story chileans like hot dogs iranians like rice ben affleck likes puerto rican is the us ben affleck affleck likes his puerto rican hot dogs in between his chili and and iranians with rice this is all based on a true story now two lanes no longer have dictators syria is roughly next to turkey i was born in california i was beaten as a child it's all true spliced piece together in the name of peace once upon a time i hugged a president we drank until midnight talking about sex and decommissioning military bases and that he really liked cocaine true based on a true story yes i had sex the mayor had sex i had sex with the mayor you had sex ben affleck had sex you had sex with ben affleck it's all based on a true story i was a great lover until the cia showed up created a file on me because i was a child of an iranian citizen and refused my father a security clearance it is difficult to be hot and steamy when you are a target of racism i think it was gabriele guy gabriele guy you know it was my friend who was hooked up with a jew a scottish woman who asked her to tie him up who asked him to tie her up then as they were having sex said me like a terrorist it's based on a true story hold on hold on i think it's my friend ben can you hear him it's ben he wants me to act in his next film about the iran iraq war yes yes i know you're excited for me it will be directed by him and bosler men and i will play one of three american hitchhikers stuck in iran and it's about denzel washington who saves the three from the iranians who are who are savagely killing iraqis with mustard gas ordered by the evil the mama the symbol saddam hussein who with his money from an evil character from libya or cuba played by the same guy who stench leave from here heathen dead and then then zell get this then puts a cap a garbage bag over my head and impales me the studio told him that they're going to create a dish to sell all over america and maybe the world because the world eats what america eats first called arab on a stick based on the movie it's going to light state fairgoers it'll be spicy exotic and i'll have my picture i'll be on the wrapper i'll be famous it will be tasty the computer you are going to support me right because we have a product we all can get behind and michelle obama will give me awards and i will bring world peace because i'm a spokesman for arab on a stick and people will be eating a piece of me and people want to know more about arabs and persians and no one's going to want to no one's going to use the word the term middle east anymore i know i know what you're thinking the meat flavor doesn't represent all of me i know that there's going to be an intestine flavor and tongue flavor and don't worry i'll be organic grass fed and and no pork they're going to keep it hello all and it's because of the work i do with ben affleck and it's entirely based on a true story you can't refute it as long as the word true is there right it's all true choose your fiction because that's the only this let the poem explain itself this is called the wonderful sixty minutes of mommy daddy never let me watch wonderful world of disney he said that too many mice and ducks and should be fun to see cause brain decay and there is no brain fairy when you lose your brain so i would crawl on the ground using my institutionalized training in my preschool of the americas to covertly change the channel and instead my daddy my baba the man with iranian rallies in his poor's western bitterness from cia infiltrations conspiracy theory heirlooms which make him make believe last in the make believe and all gods are real or corporate said more with the remote control that his split tongue ever could click click click click the voice on the television would speak for him i'm ed bradley i'm morley safer i'm mike wallace these stories in n d rooney on the next sixty minutes the longest hour of i wanted pippi longstocking i want to donald duck i want to twenty thousand leagues under the sea i wanted her to be and his love bug goofy mickey mouse i revolutionary in training rise up against my bob persian patriarchy we the lover of disney shall overcome my baba corners me when i try to leave turns me towards the screen and like a i c k e y m o u s e in school every monday morning all the kids brag about their sunday disney pleasure i would shoot back oh yeah jeter a man from dallas was unjustly accused of robbing a k f c because he was black and mike wallace found out and got him out of jail after i finished the last sentence the boy in the third row cried someone countered with the coolness of the latest goofy cartoon i yelled back ed bradley's expos on reagan secret war in nicaragua proves that the government lied to us again more kids cried the girl with the braids in the third row the entire second row near the crucified jesus loudspeaker combo all in tears my teacher looked at me with i had just broken a commandment look and she whispered robert dear catholicism and politics to not mix in public she grabbed my ear sent me to the mother superior sister barbara who suspended me for three days asking me consider the second commandment honor thy parents on or the high school on or the administration as my elementary school trinity see i said to my bob as he was as we drove home this is what i get for missing disney cartoon so he was not swayed click click on and on and on viral mental messes bailouts layoffs cover ups in laos vietnam and iran my innocence lost by corporate scandal after scandal i could not written myself of the sound bob voice interfered rather tune vision is never appreciated because everyone sees the same they are the cartoons they watch it is better to be the art than the art as i grew from boy to man i did whatever i could to block out the text the muppets comedy shows sic comes bart simpson bart simpson bart simpson until the day ronald reagan died the clock grew louder again in my head and i grew happy that my father had taught me not to be a cartoon for now i love the sound of