Bird & Beckett presents a featured poet plus open mic reading on the first Thursday of each month. On June 6th, at 7pm, the featured reader will be Kimi Sugioka, the Poet Laureate of Alameda, California. Kimi is a mother, educator, songwriter and poet. Her newest book is Wile & Wing on Manic D Press.

Kimi loves cats and birds and believes that creating community through art is a revolutionary act.

An open mic follows. All are invited to read in the open. Free.

Bird & Beckett’s monthly first Thursdays reading series is co-hosted by Michael Koch and Jerry Ferraz.

The woman breathes, by Kimi Sugioka

Her breast swells in
dream in
detritus in
perilous
fracture

The woman holds
the child
the long spoon
the tired baby
the old man’s hand
the worry
like a kettle
on a 400,000
year old fire

The woman arranges
flowers
spices
contrives
encounters
decoys

The woman sings
with scythes
and sibilant
ruminations

She toils, sweats
becomes
one of the many
her
incarnate
presence
addresses
calamity
with temperance
and nests inside
morning
creates prayer
with scimitar
and samovar
erases the blood stains
over and over

She of nightingale
and anaconda
radiant
empath
and soldier
blazing blues and
radical orations
of the precocious grey whale
the gregarious grey wolf
seeking sanctuary
creating sanctity
with breath