the science laboratory lab, two girls are discussing their project. >> you don't even know what you are doing the -- doing. you're dumb. >> you test too much. >> the day has come. the projects are to be returned. >> see, i told you? mine was the best. i told you, dummy. besides, let me see what you guys have. >> you know, i'm leaving. after school, alice and delores park thinking about human behavior. >> i don't know what people want to -- from me, for real. i have to say i think people just want me to be perfect. but you know what?

i am capable of doing anything. it doesn't matter who i am or the way i look. what matters is the effort. i will study more. >> alice studied hard. she gets automatic a's. she's on the honor roll! -- she gets all a's. she's on the honor roll. >> oh, my god. i can't believe it? you see? i am capeable. don't call me dummy. now who do you think schnur i am a girl with just good grades. >> the morale of this story is that no matter what people think about you, all you have to do is show who you really are. even if the situation isn't good for you, you must make the best effort you can and you will succeed in this life. jenny chuasiriporn did -- life. [cheers and applause]

>> all right. yell about the shooting, about the killings. mothers don't remember reality. phone call. angers, her client. who the media pictures fighting and screaming. wife drops the bottle. neighbors. let mep put some ink in your mind. blue, red, purple, green, black, so many colors of ink i'm going to start an art gearly. google me. violence is my silence. >> all right. i see a room with darkness. i see the color white. poems are made in darkness. poems are p white. poems are shadows. all poems are what you want

them to be 79 all poems ar another -- another way to express yourself. i stay active. if i see something i like i'm snatching the if you put up a fight, i'm basting. you're going to be on the floor sleeping and i'm going to be standing over you blasting the poems are funny. i hear people screaming, i hear cops coming, so i start running the i get tired of running so a get a bought fble water and start dranking -- drinking the i see the cops again so i break to fleefment poems are made to flee. poems are diaries. poems are made to go hard or go home. poems are made to influence. poems are made to touch lives. poems catch lives. poems are alive.

>> all right. my poem is called let me tell you where i've been. let me tell you where i've been. i've been places you couldn't imagine. places you think i couldn't been -- have been the places you thought you saw me but that's not where i was. places here and there, places you hear about on the news or on the air. i've been there. even if it was yesterday's tomorrow i've been there. all i go to -- do is go to school and straight home. guess i haven't been anywhere. everything changes one day. soon i can say i've been somewhere the soon i can go somewhere by air the somewhere you wouldn't dare. going to school will get me somewhere. then you will look back at me

with a fake grin because i just told you where i'm going and where i've been. >> because this is a writing community for writers who have been with writers corps for a while and the program is no longer available, i am going to truce them all at once and then they're going to just do their poems. so first i'd like to bring up sandra. sandra? >> hi, how are you, everybody. i home you're enjoying the show and that -- i'm nervous. so -- i think i will cry. i'm just acting. don't worry. and two years ago i came here at the same place and i was reading poetry, but the

difference from then to now is that i couldn't speak english. so i read my poem in spanish and i think i missed a lot of the audience because not everybody can understand or speak stash -- spanish. in restless night that i was thinking how good my professor has been to me. she has given -- given me support without even using hard words. when i'm struggling she holds my hand, letting me know that i can count on her. whenever i feel sad or share a broken tear, she asked me for a hug and it is there in her arms that i feel protected like nothing that dares to touch me could hurt me. there is a power that grows

inside me. when i find myself under her wings. under her wings i am calm. and she calls me mija, as if she were saying don't give unon account of stupid things. don't you see how strong you are? and my pain turns into a sincere smile and my soul doesn't feel hurt any hor. -- more. thank you. [cheers and applause] >> yay. and next up we have annie. annie yu, i'm sorry. annie yu. >> it's ok. so the poem i'm going to read is book of lives. my name is a book of lives.

i press leaves inside, scraps of the city, one crumbled bus ticket, a number -- numb washed with rain, a torn photograph of two little girls. my name settle map of the world. a body of continents and stars. on an airplane i look at the map. flights intersect. travel miles and seas, hours and clouds, a window bird trills by my bed. power lines crisscross streets like threads in the sky. a book of lives is a month of saturdays, a sea-- seahorse from per ru, perfume at my neck. look inside a red suitcase. you'll find letters to no one, objects found and lost, a plastic white fan, contradictory j. -- jade green, city grids, the last bite of an

ice cream cone. these are all my names. i savor these words on the tip of my tongue. a book of lives lived in my right hand. i caught your pen in the other. all the rivers flower into the sea. thank you. [cheers and applause] >> next up is -- next up is marcela ortiz. >> ok. this is the first time i'm reading in front of people. ok. all right. this is a poem to my mom. you're nothing but a group of coffee klatching women. 19 years and the only image that i can think of what i hearl my mother's voice is rosie the riveter with her hand balled up in a fist and her

hand underneath her face. coffee klatching women? a bunch of old grandmothers who sit in sewing sirgles and talk about the best blueberry circles. we banned my mother from the kitchenen -- because of an incident where she had burnt water the the only person who cooked was my father. please keep your peace, mom. yes, my mother say woman but coffee klatching? the term was worse than nails on the chalk board. oh, yes, a coffee klatching woman who has raised three children and never taking shying from anyone. you sure do act like a coffee klatching women with your boots

and jeans on, arriving to run a crew of obnoxious men's, because 50% of the men's brains skiptd -- consist of their oh so glorified junk which doesn't even work right. most of the time. coffee klatching women? sitting around talking nonsense? the same nonsense that finally changed the 19th amendment. yes we can vote. i can see abigail adams sitting and clutching her scorching hot cup of joe, john adams saying sit down and drink your damn coffee, woman. she really was the brains of the outfit. my mother is overworked, tired, but her still solid body stood hard as a rock. i'm not going to cry, as a tear

falls down from her face. don't cry, mom, don't cry. [cheers and applause] >> that was her first time ever. yay! and up next we have indiana telepenova. >> a recipe for water. start with the color magenta, a burning asphalt, of beach ball sighing out its life, a garden grown on accident after accident, add a father painting shelves on the cove, a pinch of guilt, statues of isabella

butter flisse -- butterflies, and extinct alpha betts, a teaspoon of autumn leaves, a shepard playing with the winds, some animal begging for snow. mix vigorously like the mountain mixes up its slopes. preheat the bed of a star to -- 240 light-years away. thank you. and next is -- [cheers and applause] >> next is robin black. >> hi, robin! >> oh, ok. i had to know. this is called "eviction

notice." the police turned us away. 11 years old eating baby food. days warm like the occasional free matsoff from next door. no plates the cups were yoplaits. i stepped on a nail taking my sister through the yard the drinking from beer bottles that tasted like warm quarters the i caught fleas from cookie puss sleeping on my stomk keeping us both warms. at that age i lost the comfort from lies. stranded on a crescent move, floating in a sea of ash littered with diamonds the i swallowed past lives to spit these alternate futures. >> one more big round of applause for our very talented apprentice program. apprentice program. fantastic.

[horns honking] announcer: big dreams and good grades aren't enough to get into college. there are actual steps you need to take. finding someone who can help is the first and most important. for the next steps, go to knowhow2go.org.

good even and welcome. jack hirschman. he has been a poet in san francisco from 2006. his powerful voice set the tone, his latest book, "all that's left". >> my voice is a little untuned. very simply so they are not any

question of anxiety or worry. on march 14th, i decided to take an operation on my carotted artery and therefore. i don't want to go out by a stroke. i would rather go out another way. the operation was perfectly senseful. there wasn't pain. they put a tube down your throat. so i lost my voice for a month or 2. therefore, i ask your

indulgence. i will read in this voice, if you don't mind. i am very pleased this book came out. i am going to read with the war. the war drug on. die after die. so shares and shout so jibes, nor many a steer of so cult exist and jams, juice, gins over in his tomb.

tears over borrowed good as well. and future is dust and smothering. the war i rock is a masked, sad gem stone of war kings and people. and fear must without heaven, over a toga pot. that's import that war boil. that's bile that gag or jail roomy and oath and the war is cocked.

air and fuel the plague and watch him of his hunter of ash guard down the stinking hole. they were shacked up from to be done. >> [applause]. >> this house of hunger, for the american kids who go to sleep each night without supper. this house of hunger has millions of kids in it. breakfast and lunch is all their worth. famished of billions of bucks in them. what pretty prophets have set before king's death.

they stink with the stench of unmitigated treaty. their indifference included in their digital speeds. while those kids lie in bed without a cup of bullion in their head. also kill the children, american you shootful. and the murders you plant in your own backyard. keep insisting your democracy. but in the starving darkness, those sad, lost eyes know the truths of your lies that you sold all the marbles in their little sacks to the bullies who

applaud because they won't give them back. you have stolen the bread that cried from their mouths and turned it into dirty dough. when finally they manage to fall asleep, their dreams cause you the haunted house. the spell of the sun to burn you down so that greeds flee and steal the good things for hungry little bellies to eat. between the page, with the heart and the mind, wrestling upon it.

and the year which later will receive those limbs of light as perfect harmony. there's a stillness who's volume speaks word of words defiant. treasures of the unstable. secrets of the heavy enchantment and the never ending gathering at the lips of the kiss of poem. now, >> [applause]. >> now, i understand them causing an enormous amount of

anguish of my voice. i brought my girlfriend. she is going to read 3 poems to you so you get another dimention of my voice. please welcome, agnes ford >> the house of the setting sun. the comrade again and the poorist way wave you. to the red flag. i put my mount to your misery new orleans. here, war lies piles so high. this floating prison of a cementary cries of range.

this delta lies on its side. rows and rows upon it's own government and crushed. summertime is over and the living is dead. and around midnight all hopes are looted. no one will ever come clean of the katrina of the new orleans and the stinking house of the setting sun. but it's the black and the blue of the loving on the shoes, let alone a dime or water, america, you are always scotched earth in our mouth. always a rain of disaster of

streams of our broken eyes. now the rags are the most turn. our pores the poorest that can be worn in the souls shop. now that all is lost and there is only nothing to lose. long live the courage and the poor. they begin to waiver. [applause]. >> vennetia. i was enranged at your body enettia. chicanery that cried out of an

awfulor gast. slowly i found you should side streets where you practice a strolling stillness without any engine sounds and the skies turning on into color and then eternal magnificence of twilight, it accompanies your every move and theirs doubt about it, you are more adorable without the car wrapped around you, where you can be what you are. walking water. that gently laps. i have come to you this midnight and lane down in your black body with it's soft red blush and pulled the starkly

blue cover over a cheek or moon blushing through the midst. and the final for me. juna. that's juna bomb. that she lived on board avenue. 3 blocks away from the street isn't bronx i grew up on. just what are you getting out june abonus, that an alphabet, i would be visiting on a masterpiece and writing a bistro of poems. scones. 47 years later.

she has long since ash, the world has become unmitigated cash. a woman gazing into the face of a cell phone. i gave me lover a cherry and lived on. endure these bitter hips and hot heads and the empty collapse. night will still holdup after all these years. summer snap. >> virginia tech. the loner is here. the one who stopped listening. the one with the hidden fuse.