New Jersey poets Hugo Dos Santos, Ysabel Y. González, and Tomo Zbrizher, will be reading from their work in celebration of National Poetry Month. This event is open to the community and will feature an open mic to follow.
With a combination of humor and honesty, grit and tenderness, Zbrizher removes her skin and unravels her many parts on the page…And she does so, but not without the acknowledgment of the scabs and scars left behind.
In her poem, “We Will Make Good Ancestors Indeed,” poet Ysabel Y. González imagines what kind of America she and her husband want to leave the world, writing:
You and I know good exists beyond us,
we believe in justice and have felt it.
When our time is done here
we will soar into the night,
remain tethered, constellations forever speckling vastness,
stars pressed into black, clasped gems
forming two lovers blanketing the sky,
guiding the ones that require mapping.
Gonzalez’s poems explore womanhood, tenderness, and her Puerto Rican lineage and investigate humanity, and how compassion and empathy are two of the most important talents we can practice, particularly at such a pivotal moment in our country’s history.
The poems of Hugo Dos Santos evoke the gravity of life without falling into despair. In turns sombre, joyful, tender, and elegiac, the journey ends with the last poem that gives this work its name, Homecoming.” (from the book jacket)