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. fantastic.

>> i honor each and every one of you for coming out to the library on saturday afternoon to have a discussion on this important topic. who used personal care products? shampoo, face cream, deodorant, contact solution? the numbers could be staggering. the stories that i tell in the book and stories i talk about today are store reus about all of us. to tell you a little bit about my personal story. i was a 17 magazine makeup

reading desperate to read in. with each careful purchase, i was one step closer to that girl i dreamed up. i used lots of them, 20 products a day, makeup, skin creams, an enormous cloud of aqua net hair spray. this is the back in the days of big hair and shoulder pads and bright makeup. i looked up all these products as a teen, 20 products a day, i was surprised to discover, i had been with exposing myself to 200 products a day before i got on the school bus. what is in this stuff that we

put on our bodies, put in our hair on a daily basis. that is what we have been working on and looking at for about the passed 5 years. these are the groups involved in the campaign for safe products. most poplar brands of all kinds of products, deodor rants, makeups, even baby shampoos contain chemicals that are toxic that get into our system. most of these chemicals, um, come from oil by-products, petroleum. this is true of the high end

brands like cliniq ue. we know they are toxic, animal studies show they lead to certain health effects. it is okay because there is just a little bit of toxic chemical and you can't prove it causes harm. so of course, as we pointed out, none of us used this product today. here is a run down of my beauty routine, some of the things i was supposed to, 40 hormone chemicals, 17 carcinogens, 17 penetration chemicals. they draw others more deeply into the property. 16 toxins, less than 50 percent of my chemicals has been assessed by any publically accountable institutions.

there are no government requirements for us to understand these chemicals. we have a lot of information about some of them. most of them have never been -- the combined mixtures of a developing teenager saying day after day year after year. there is a lot we don't know. what do know there is a tremendous amount of scientific evidence that showing low doses of chemical exposures can interfere with hormones, change the way our genomes for diseases that come down the long. most important time of development in the womb, teenagers developing. we also know that disease chronic disease is meaning chemicals are on the rise,

breast cancers. who knows a young cancer or family member that has breast cancer, infertilities, testicular cancer. there is a lot of evidence showing environmental pollutants are part of the reason. so we see that there is a lot of cause for concerns and the trends um, cause us to look at these chemicals and say what is going on here. we know from the science that chemicals are ending up where they are not supposed to be and that is inside of our bodies. scientists can measure the chemicals getting into us, bio measuring. this is from the first chapter,

indecent exposure, the intimate details. charlotte was surprised by the test results. mother of 2 among the first people to be tested for a wide range of industrial chemicals. test revealed that her body contained mercury lead cosmetics. i felt violated charlotte reported. she was upset about the pesticide. i never used them in my house, never on my lawn. i bought organic whenever i could. her body contained several variations of organic chlorines designed to attack nervous systems of insects. i never bought it.

isn't that trespassing. i tell this in my story of mary broon. mary never felt called to be an environmentalist she was nursing her 6 month daughter olivia and a story had been done by texas tech where they looked at breast milk samples, all were contaminated with rocket fuel. i was stunned, i thought breast milk was as pure as it came for food source. i was up all night thinking about it. i tell the story about michelle from california whose family was the first family to be monitored in the oakland

tribune. it stunned even scientists. the tests found many of the same chemicals they found in charlotte's 5-year-old mic ala, she had recently spent a lot of time in nail salons. the biggest surprise of what they found in 2-year-old rowland, chemicals found in nearly anyone else in the world 6 times higher than in parents, twice the levels that researchers see in land animals. this is a serious warning said a scientist researchers on flame retar tkapbts. young children are exposed

because they put their hands in their mouth and bodies don't eliminate chemicals as readily. to me i think very historically crystallizes what we are learning. that was a story in 2006 by the environmental working group where they analyzed the umbilical cord blood of newborn babies and found an average of 200 chemicals found to be toxic in every single baby, man made synthetic chemicals. when we see this picture that babies are being born into the world polluted with industrial chemicals it is time to say how can we do things differently? how can we do things differently? that is the question that essentially we took to the

world's largest beauty companies starting in 2003 letters, phone calls. who thinks the companies were wanting to have this conversation? unfortunately they weren't. we encountered a lot of evasion, excuses. first they ignored us. increasingly they are having to have this conversation because people are become withing more concerned and the companies are having to face up to it. i think, you know, when we see this information, too, we realize, all of us are contaminated, we understand the choices we make intimately affect our biology, the same poisons running through the rivers are running through our

veins, especially the billion dollar corporations that are selling dreams of health and beauty around the world. they have a have a responsibility. does anybody think baby shampoo needs to contain carcinogens? many companys are making these products without the chemicals. when we look at testing of baby products, most of the brands and this is poplar bubble baths contained a known animal carcinogen, it was in seasame street character brands, and johnson & johnson brand baby shampoo. this is some of the lipstick products. some of you may have seen we

had a bill in california industry, they said we can't get lead out of lipstick. but it is not in 39 percent of the products that we tested including this $1.99 wet and wild but found $8 lorel and and $24 lipstick. what we see consistently is that even the high end brands, you are paying for packaging and

marketing. everybody likes to ask about cliniq u e if you go into a macies, you'll see the lab white coats and scientifically presented. it is the same set of chemicals packaged with a different marketing program. disturbing some of the women of color are among the most toxic. women are bombarded with light skinned looking models. every product claims to have a whitening benefit. here is an example of one of the ads that you'll see in china, procter and gamble, high

end line sk 2, hugely poplar, this product was the cause of near riots in china in 2006 after the government reported it contained, band heavy metal. hundreds of women demanding refunds lined up down the block. here is an example of them busting down the headquarters in shanghai. women do not want toxic bad metals. in their $100 skin cream. unfortunately, the government and procter and gamble was freaked out about this. then it was announceable, just a little bit of toxic metals, don't worry. they put the products back on

the shelf and back on the market. china is the no. 1 growth market for procter and gamble. have quotes where she says china is no. 2 mark and going for no. 1 and do it by marketing our products to millions of villages across china. that is the mentality of the company, all about growth and convincing us that we need more products. these are also in the most toxic categories and increasingly marketed to younger and younger girls. this is an example of a 5 or 7 year old on the cover of a skin, hair relaxer. these are ratings, that is the most toxic hair relaxers and no. 1 is a kid's product. then for hair dye, younger and

younger girls are getting hair dye. "new york times", girls 10 and 11 are getting their hair dyed into the salon. it used to be 15 or 16. the industry was excited. this represent as growth market for the industries. it also represents age and continued chemical exposures to many of these toxins for young girls and more exposures to the environment as hair dyes get into the waterway and food even if we don't get our hair dyed. our skin should be lighter