April's featured poet is Maiana Minahal, a queer Filipina American poet and teacher, born in Manila, raised in Los Angeles, and currently living in San Francisco. She studied with June Jordan's Poetry for the People program, is a recipient of an Artist Award Grant from the Serpent Source Foundation, and is one of the founding members of the Queer Pin@y Kreatibo collective. She has most recently been published in the anthologies Going Home to a Landscape and Screaming Monkeys . Maiana's first chapbook, closer and her first book, Sitting Inside Wonder , both came out last year. Maiana is also appearing in a multidisciplinary performance entitled “Before Their Words.” Featured below is a poem she wrote for collaborating with kali artist Gura Michelle Bautista, followed by information about their upcoming performance:

stolen/kali:

me
mine
he
mine
she
he
mine
he
mine
kill
her
he
mine
she
mine
he
blood
she
kill
her
must
mine
he
kill
mine

dust heart
must fight
eat rage
boil bleed
mine he
me her
kill them
mine she
crush life
knife she
mine he
kill her
me she
must take
own we
kill them
she he
skin scrape
kill me
own we
heart rot
mine he
cold blade
crush her
kill three

fear live feed
kill we three
stone blood we
mine kill he
blind rage me
blade stick bleed
crush heart dust
rage kill me
blood cut blade
this pain feed
dead heart gone
rage kill we

kick punch step push
round blow peach keen
wood sting gut glass
blue ice cool peel
air knife clean rush
kick gut step slice
ground skin air gleam
edge cold knife blade
stab once twice full
force red bloom bleed

kick punch step push
round blow peach keen
wood sting gut glass
blue ice cool peel
air knife clean rush
kick gut step slice
ground skin air gleam
edge cold knife blade
stab once twice full
force red bloom bleed

kick punch step push
round blow peach keen
wood sting gut glass
blue ice cool peel
air knife clean slice
kick gut step rush
ground skin air gleam
edge cold knife blade
stab once twice full
force red bloom bleed

kick punch step push fall
fist fly hair hit sprawl
blood bone sky thirst stone
keep her down still crawl
stone dust heart claw lean
pull stop light top beam
send full pop slash ice
blue bruise jab strap knee
ice crush cold sea foam
mouth bleed sting salt broke
blade shine gray dull slice
wind whip sand scrape throat
slice thin air burn blind
hand raise up cloth climb
feel her no sight see
choke no breath no time

loose grip fall blade fight
hurt lost gone me right
lean with wind flow past
no kill need no might
breathe stop hold pull back
still pace slow soft track
stand low wind flow past
step ground lush wet black

night hush wave sea foam
touch skin eyes mouth bone
own him her not mine
heart breath walk us home

***

BEFORE THEIR WORDS

Come experience Maiana's beautiful poetry, Michelle's & Rona's dazzling martial arts & Neddy's soothing guitar melodies!

Friday, April 9 @ 8p, $sliding scale, call for reservations at 415.554.0402

at Jon Sims Center For The Arts, 1519 Mission Street (between 11th Street and South Van Ness), South of Market.

As part of the Jon Sims Center's Artist In Residence program, the work-in-progress will be followed by a post-performance discussion and feedback with the audience, and reception with the artists.

‘before their words' (a work in progress), by Maiana Minahal, is a collaborative, interdisciplinary, multimedia poetry performance that combines subversive, poetic narrative with indigenous pre-colonial Philippine cultural traditions and art forms. Utilizing indigenous Philippine dance (Singkil), martial arts (Kali), and music, the larger poetic narrative unfolds as the (queer) re-telling of the Philippine folktale of Sondayo, the village woman who battles the wind goddess to re-claim her stolen husband. Featuring Michelle Bautista, Nedjula Baguio, and Rona Fernandez.

Maiana Minahal is a queer Filipina American poet and teacher, born in Manila, raised in Los Angeles, and currently living in San Francisco. She studied with June Jordan's Poetry for the People program, is a recipient of an Artist Award Grant from the Serpent Source Foundation, and is one of the founding members of the Queer Pin@y Kreatibo collective. She has most recently been published in the anthologies ‘Going Home to a Landscape' and ‘Screaming Monkeys.' Maiana's first chapbook, ‘closer,' and her first book, ‘Sitting Inside Wonder,' both came out last year.

Michelle Bautista is a SF Bay Area native and an instructor in the Filipino martial art of Kali as well as a published poet. Her work can be found in "Babaylan", "Eros Pinoy", and most recently "Going Home to a Landscape" (Calyx, 2003).

Nedjula Baguio graduated with a BA in music from San Francisco State in 2002. She currently volunteers for the prison advocacy group TIP, Transgender In Prison. She lives and works in San Francisco and spends her free time causing trouble for "the man".

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MORE KALI AND POETRY AT MILLS COLLEGE

Michelle Bautista also will join Eileen Tabios for a poetry/kali collaborative performance in poet Juliana Spahr's class at Mills College. The presentation is open to the public:

Wednesday, April 7, 2004
7 pm
Mills Hall 322
Mills College
5000 Macarthur Blvd.
Oakland, CA

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CRUCIAL BLISS EPILOGUES

Eileen Tabios's third poetry e-chapbook collection entitled CRUCIAL BLISS EPILOGUES is published by -- and now available via PDF from the website of -- Tamafhyr Mountain Poetry at http://tmpoetry.com . This chapbook is unique for offering (at the end of the chap) a reading/interpretation of one of Eileen's poems by noted poet Ron Silliman .

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EILEEN TABIOS WITH MARY TALUSAN IN LOS ANGELES

Sunday, April 25th 6-9:30PM

@ THE SMELL:
247 SOUTH Main St., LA 90012 ENTER IN BACK

Come enjoy this media/arts event running the last Sunday of every month. Mark your calendars.

THIS MONTH'S FEATURES will include:

Poetry and Music
• Eileen Tabios with Mary Talusan

Music
• Franklin Bruno

• The Urinals

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REVIEW OF EILEEN TABIOS' BEHIND THE BLUE CANVAS

Poet Tom Beckett offers a review of Eileen Tabios's first short story collection, Behind The Blue Canvas (Giraffe Books, 2004) on his Poetry Blog “ Vanishing Points of Resemblance .” Here's an excerpt.

I wish more writers would find a way to work within the nexus of sexuality/writing and art. It often seems to me to be a geography of concerns that "serious" poets and fiction writers work around-- that for all of the politics around sexuality there often seems to be little concern for the contexts and concerns of sexual people themselves. // Eileen Tabios has made an impressive foray onto a contested terrain with these evocations of artists and their passionate entanglements.

Eileen's book is available through Giraffe Books in the Philippines and, elsewhere through Amazon.com