chimes but for its delicate wide beak, ushers an intemperate reprieve? 33 beads on a string, why pretend to know beyond the presence of click. thank you. please welcome gale sher >> the first one is why did she care? why did she care, she wondered, laying aside the book. a dim light could be seen possibly from a cabin reaching in not for the word, but for the space which a time. fat drops driven violently side

ways. the man's mind into which she tossed herself becomes a bird. fly away, bird. fly south where you are needed. letters moved, she could barely make them out. the sky moved, hanging bluntly. a circle swayed toppled to the sea. to you, sea, i chant and to the one with ears, hearing you into me. this one is called, having eaten fish. having eaten fish, i open myself to make them more comfortable. i pet the fawn, twisting my

calves. two fish leap, kiss, and die. fish, fry here, oh my fish, sway grass in coin of rain so far we kill the all of fishes presides while i walk by, covering my head. the last one is, my bones are in the mountain. my bones are in that mountain, in the veil of flowers beyond its southern pass. slipped down to me by the sky long ago. broken, a coterie of lambs thought of as a bush.

the land was yellow and contained a tree. a man tied to a pole looked up. he is praying and others, too, are glancing eastward. oh, house of cans, i squat, wind blows. to replace its word is why i gather mushrooms in sticky sun i squat, peaceful juice spills on my gaping pant leg finally, finally. the mountain becomes a cloud, slouching south, following the man. and it's my great pleasure to present beau. . >> this is called lesson.

trying to pull yourself back along the words, trying to get close to what holds the flesh to them. so you talk over the words. you shout to the words and the words sometimes begin, just begin to drag you along like a bad leg, to carry you to a place where they can turn and knife-like skin you into other words and move you closer, try to kill you, keep you there or let you hear, however briefly, their deadly harmony. this is called markings and it's in two parts.

one, the last is leveled. the eye witnesses are moved to a yard, a street. the road is made smooth. two, we have the ability to not regret, not one death and then exactly two even before another. and in this approximate silence we have felt that not regreting has spared us loneliness. called at the door. you did not tell me about these hours, how thick they were and wounded. i hear myself telling someone to punch me just to figure the

order of my beliefs. someone else in my clothes who would view this and move on. explain again the conditions that will bring along the morning and what it is here that convenes the night. and then the last poem is called upon living. they shove your feet out of the smokestack kitchen. they narrow the big sea sba a line of your sweat and then they take away your last word and then they take away another. now you put the keys back in your pocket and now you push on the door until it is in flame,

until it is in flame. next reader is jane herschfield. . >> one sand grain among the others in winter wind. i wake with my hand held over the place of grief in my body. depend on nothing, the voice advices, but even that is useless. my ears are useless, my familiar and intimate tongue, my protecting hand is useless that wants to hold the single leaf to the tree and say, not this one. this one will be saved. a poem written on september

15th, 2001, against the knowledge that exactly what would happen was probably going to happen. the dead do not want us dead. the dead do not want us dead. such petty errors are left for the living. nor do they want our mourning. no gift to them. not rage, not weeping. return one of them, any one of them, to the earth and look. such foolish skipping, such telling of bad jokes, such feasting. even a cucumber, even a single anise seed, feasting.

and, last poem, foolish of me and yet optimism. the title is only optimism. the other part was a preface. more and more, i have come to admire resilience, not the simple resistance of a pillow whose foam returns over and over to the same shape, but the sinuous tenacity of a tree finding the light newly blocked on one side, it turns in another. a blind intelligence, true, but out of such persistence arose turtles, rivers, mitochondria, figs, all this resinous, unretractable, earth.

the next reader is summer brenner. . >> i'm going it read today an excerpt from anana, queen of heaven and earth. i wanted to say a few words about anana. this is the oldest literary work that we have. these are the cuniform tablets that were excavated in the late 1880's and early 1890's by the university of pennsylvania. tens of thousands of fragments of cuniform fragments. the story of anana starts in her adolescence. it travels through her journey as a queen and a goddess, and much of her story is devoted to the love, a very passionate love, for dimusi, who is a shepherd who she takes as her husband, lover and king. and this is called the return.

a lament was raised in the city. my lady weeps bitterly for her young husband. anana weeps bitterly for her young husband. woe for her husband, woe for her young love, woe for her house, woe for her city. dimusi was taken captive in aruk. he will no longer bathe in aradu. he will no longer treat the mother of anana of his mother. he will no longer perform his sweet task among the maidens of the city. he will no longer raise his sword higher than the kugar of priests. great is the grief of those who mourn for dimusi.

anani wept for dimusi. gone is my husband, my sweet husband. gone is my sweet love. my beloved has been taken from the city. oh, you flies of the steppe, my beloved bride groom has been taken from me before i could wrap him with a proper shroud. the wild bull lives no more. his shepherd, the wild bull, lives no more. dimusi, the wild bull, lives no more. i ask the hills and valleys where is my husband. i say to him, i can no longer bring him food. i can no longer serve him drink. the jackel lies in his bed. you ask me about his reed pipe. the wind must play it for him. you ask me about his sweet songs. the wind must sing them for him.

satur, the mother of dimusi, weeps for his song. once my boy wandered so freelly on the steppe, now he is captured. once dimusi wandered so freely on the steppe, now he is bound. the ewe gives up her lamb, the goat gives up her kid. my heart plays the reed pipe of mourning. in a place where he once said my mother will ask for me, now he cannot move his hands, now he cannot move his feet. i would see my child. the mother walked to the desolate place. she looked at the slain wild bull. she looked into its face. she said, my child, the face is yours.

the spirit has fled. there is mourning in the house. there is grief in the inner chambers. the sister wandered about the city, weeping for her brother. gestanana wandered about the city, weeping for dimusi. oh, my brother, who is your sister? i am your sister. oh, dimusi, who is your mother? i am your mother. the day that dawns for you will also dawn for me. the day that you will see, i will also see. i would find my brother, i would comfort him, i would share his fate. when she saw the sister's grief, when anana saw the grief of gestana, she spoke to him gently. dimusi is no more. i would take you to him, but i do not know the place. then a fly appeared.

the holy fly circled the air above anana's head and spoke, if i tell you where dimusi is, what are you give me? anana said, if you tell me, i will let you frequent the beer houses and taverns. i will let you dwell among the talk of the wise ones. i will let you dwell among the songs of the minstrals. the fly spoke. lift your eyes to the edges of the steppe. lift your eyes to arali. there you will find gestanana's brother. there you will find the shepherd, dimusi. anana and gestanana went to the steppe. they found dimusi weeping. anana took his and and said,

you will go to the underworld for half of the year. your sister, since she asked, will go the other half. on the day gestanana is called, that day you will be set free. anana set dimusi's hand in the and of the holy, great is your renoun, holy aristagal. i sing your praises. thank you.

>> hi and welcome back to authors who make you think. i appreciate you wanting to think on a beautiful saturday

afternoon. 8 years ago in the ban shell at golden gate park. jonathan, one of our readers was there. 20 readers and 8 afternoons and now there are venues around the city. i will read a few poems. the first one is, after the bleeding. it was inspired by 2 photos that were in the san francisco chronicle in june 2005. the first, i will read the captions. photo captions. and follow with the poem. children watch as police collect pieces of bodies from a suicide bombing. front page photo caption san francisco chronicle june 14, 2005. >> the not guilty verdicts in the michael jackson trial.

front page photo caption, san francisco chronicle june 14, 2005. after the bleeding the blood spattered walls draw the gaze of children wanting to see what has caused such a noise. how can they not stair. arms and legs, pieces of torso scattered, the smell of new death and feared hair. they must be asking the same question. a person who blows themselves up must believe in something. must believe in something or else not. hopelessness degreesed in apnigzs, righteousness disguised in a tuxedo of death much the children don't understand. i being of the dead dying man the bleeding bystanders who left to buy cheese or tobacco.

in car bombs suicide bombs and we keep talking as though this will end like the final judgment of that black man who looks white and sleeps with boys but doesn't touch them. after the bleeding the children's shoes will be forever stained in the crimson color of death. who will set the doves free then. >> the next is sdaefrt on the horizon. i'm sure many of you have seen or heard regularly in the news. my father came from iran so every time i see those headlines and get an article in my e mail i have this moment of panic thinking about my family members in iran who might be the next victims of this terrible war

administration this is, disaster on the horizon. it begins with words. daggers of men who bleed their nations of hope kill any promise. here is war, a bag full of hate posturing angry man rhetoric unleashing disaster on the horizon. war has no face like a genie it doesn't go back in the bottle. the witchary gives nothing it is a tornado that sucks up life, spits out ashes and broken minds i can feel in my bones. near as anyone who's face i see who's eyes i hold tight fixod this comp us i see the war coming breaking lose in the mouths. they are monsters who can't see the people who will weep. they're are creators of the

destruction that begins on the tongue and ends in the cold eyes of tomorrow. [applause] >> last year, i read 9 stories in my allotted 6 minutes this year i thought i would be ambitious and do 10. first is called cosmology. after they learned that the universe was a mass produced toy tossed by a goddess they no longer wondered by laws was sure in the clockwork in a wind up bird were shot with uncertainties. optimists contributed the reason to the fact that the toy was broken. pessimists acknowledged this. but insistd that in it's broken state could the cosmos belong to those who lives within. the goddess grown found the universe under board games in a

closet. she did not give it to her children. she did not have it fixed by her husband instead slipping away now and then from her family she delighted in the haphazard way it ran. the release in her life. >> the next one is entitled. explanation. twisted tree branches explain exactly themselves. the next is called, a simple story. his love was too simple. if he met a woman who imagined what it would it be like to be her husband. he learned she was already attached. if she did interest in him he would bring her fresh oranges. she'd leave him certain that no

man could love truly to such scant evidence. his evidence was not meager he was not trying to judge her. his love was too simple and he belonged to her simply if her love was as simple as his. immigration. their final night together before she had to go back home, she clung to him as if he were a mighty sclif and between them and morning was an awful abyss. as they slept though neither felt it happening by dawn not even their finger tips were touching. he shivered and reached for her. the woman's hazy blue ice opened one at a time they took a while to focus when they did they appeared not

to be looking at his skin but surveying a foreign land. >> this is called, regrets. if only she known as on her deathbed she would not find the love of her life she would have reached the same great age but never have lived. next is retirement. the pampered old cat slept day and night happily dreaming about napping. [laughter] and slightly shorter than that called, quartery. >> the bug that crawled across the key board didn't leave word. the next story is a second chance. after their myth was written, echo was permitted to mayor nar

sisz who spurned herrode to be shunned by his own cold reflection. she tried not to fret that vanity diminished him. what would have been the thrill and mystery thrilled her nippled body leaving a mockary of a voice. she carried him back to her cavern, still, there lives together was wanting and not only because in their condition they had trouble conceiving children. they became astranged though she longed to give him everything and he was eager to take it all. each sought the other through a different mirror. >> called : what happened happened. and finally. [laughter] a story called

terminals. in the last moment of his life, time slowed and slowed to a halt. no longer pressed as he has been in youth he strolled the youth on foot and thought over every thought. love and war and stars he grabbed the meaning of it all as a whole. he yearned to share what he knew. though that lived on and might have learned moved to a future where his still voice would not be heard. thank you. [applause] >> hello. i'm going to read a scene from draining the sea coming out in march. it takes place in guatemala during the 80's. this is a scene from the

polytechnic the tick cal school where they would take the disappeared. emanuel for the americas. we are inside the basement of the polytechnic and i'm admiring the bone is thattedose that your heal bone makes in the sunlight in the palms of my hand in my mind. when you come to my bed your hands and breath is sweet and we can love like this for hours. i can find christ in your body. this too must be constructed and killed bike on television with pain and blood that's beautiful like a red refer. you made me into a woman and i surend erred into it a man-made into a woman and returned. but you don't want to my bed this is the metal cloth you are chained to in the polytechnic. and i do we do it slowly with timed extensions of christ, his

face removed and his penis removed the maggets and the wounds the teeth and hair weeks before he is your christ in the black pit with you. each day becomes eternity of days the sun never sets or rises the light bulb on a wire as i burn you 117 times with my cigarettes while the other guards have gone out for a meal beef stake tomatoes and red wines then i will ask for your for giveness. you look at me or rather you stair at me, make a picture on my eyelids and my disks covering my ice to the pupils through the tinted lenses. iar