Home in the Bay

By Kim Shuck, Val Vera, tiny gray-garcia and 16 more

Featuring works by esteemed writers devorah major, Maw Shein Win, Kim Shuck, tiny gray-garcia, Val Vera, Jan Steckel, Arnoldo Garcia, J Spagnolo, Audrey Can-dyCorn, Lisa Ganser, Muteado Silencio, Dee Allen, and more, this anthology brings together pieces shared and inspired by Aunt Lute Books’ Home in the Bay project honoring voices impacted by gentrification, colonization, migration, and homelessness.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Aunt Lute Books
• Release date: Oct 19, 2023
• ISBN: 9781939904393

Kim Shuck

Kim Shuck is an Indigenous writer widely published in journals, anthologies, and a couple of solo books. Shuck was awarded an inaugural National Laureate Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets, and a PEN Oakland Censorship Award. Kim was the 7th Poet Laureate of San Francisco and has a collection of essays from Andover St. Archives Press called Noodle, Rant, Tangent. They also authored the poetry collection Exile Heart from That Painted Horse Press. At this writing she has ten published books of her own work and a further ten anthologies she's been involved in editing. Shuck hosts many reading events around the San Francisco Bay Area, including three readings per month which are part of ongoing series.

Book preview

Kneel

Val Vera

If I could walk, I would kneel

Against atrocities, oppression, a flag of false impression

Land of the free?

If you don’t look like me.

Abled caucasity.

The code to liberty.

If I could walk, I would kneel

On the neck of isms and systems that capitalize on prisons.

Cages only enrage us!

Your privilege is outrageous!

Determined to engage us through historical pages

of

Hatred.

Violence.

Voices no longer silent!

If I could walk, I would kneel

Armed for battle.

Justice of steel.

White Supremacy.

White House Supremacist.

Targets are set!

Bullets of Black fists,

Brown fists,

Native fists,

Cripple fists!

Enough of this...

Righteous anger responds like this!

Like Jesus at the temple

Turning tables.

It’s time to turn the tables of our temple!

Originally published in Crip Lyrics (POOR Press).

The Privilege of Breathing

tiny gray-garcia

As you sit under your roofs

And complain about the soot

Watching Air Quality Index

Soar to the roof

I must remind all of you living in places So you can shelter in safety

of so many of us still outside

Evicted behind the lie of rent—the myth of success

The hoarding of stolen mama earth & all those real eSNAKE papers and payments

Hiding in doorways, car seats, bus benches Without a place—away from your sheltered

eyes While Mama Earth fires rage outside

And you close your windows and doors Heeding the warnings of sheltering in place for sure

So many of us can barely breathe no longer having the privilege

Of sheltered safe space

In the colonial terror launch centuries ago—

Poor people made poor by colonial theft and the lie of ownership

Continue to slip in and out o f your fake lie called Non-profiteering

And Business Improvement Districts

The Privilege of Breathing

Shelter Beds and vouchers

Saviors and Charity complex

Black and Brown PoLice Terror

leading to Black and Brown PoLice Murder And then there is the LIE OF RENT

And once again we are all left to ask

How do you shelter in place when you have no place?

How do you housed peoples/politricksters continue to practice the violent act of looking away?

I don’t want your pity

I don’t want your crumbs

I want to close a door, shut a window and share the privilege of breathing one more day to

come

Originally published in The SideWalk Motel-Poems &

PoShunary from a poverty skola (POOR Press).

Paper bags made of memories

tiny gray-garcia

Side by Side

chair frames and baby toys,

jackets, toothbrushes coffee cans and pillows wrapped up in paper bags made of

memories

nylon homes buried under lives made of storms these aren’t the storms of rain and thunder

sleet or hail—these rain drops include sheriff’s boots and eviction