PoetryView
By Sam Pierstorff
August’s Poetry Night & Haiku Battle was a powerful celebration of self-expression, community, and the transformative impact of art. Highlights included Blake, a 62-year-old English teacher, being crowned haiku champion, and a 16-year-old poet, Sophie, bravely sharing her work for the first time. The evening was marked by heartfelt performances, tears, laughter, and historic moments, including Downtown Streets Team Member Martese who learned to write haiku for the first time at the show and advanced all the way to the semi-finals and a powerful performance by Modesto’s newest Poet Laureate, Angela Drew, the city’s first African American Poet Laureate and a true voice of the people. The night exemplified the deep connections and inspiration that art fosters, reinforcing the Modesto Artists Movement’s commitment to cultivating more shared experiences that unite and uplift our community. September’s event is Write Night, 2nd Wednesday at LoFi.
Winning Haiku by Blake Mittan
Spitting flames of truth,
Ms. Drew’s word salsa wakes and shakes.
Poet Laureate
Sam’s push up power,
The muscle of lifting artist dreams.
Yoked with passion
Lo Fi vibe is high,
Diverse souls forge community,
Hi Fi truth is heard
Sometimes I slide past
The calm truth, into the fear.
I breathe and recall.
Maybe for one day,
Release memories of hurt,
And just live for now
And this was the winning poem by LADY K from Fresno.
What did they expect my odds for success to be, when I have been fighting someone else’s demons since before I could remember what remembering even was…
You see,
when your mother’s mental health battles, body dysmorphia &
suicidal tendencies
were as commonplace
as some folks morning cup of coffee & saturday morning cartoons,
my options for normalcy were slim to none before I even could determine that this shit ain’t even normal anyway…..
The problem within the black community, is that we never want to talk to a professional….
we normalize & perpetuate the troupe of this families business stays within these walls…
well what if these walls only contained someone who was but yet a babe themselves…
❤️
I didn’t even understand which issues were my own or ones that I just THOUGHT were mine.
because the hive mind mentality is strong within a single parent household,
Where one is raising the other & I’m STILL not quite sure who was playing which role…
What happens when my own trauma response was in response to said trauma that don’t nobody have any real clue as to how to fix because nobody wants to identify it as TRAUMA or a MENTAL HEALTH disorder ….
those words are like a radioactive ticking time bomb to a people who have been ostracized & stigmatized for soooo many things….
I can see a scenario in which, let’s just NOT identify yet another thing for THEM to critique…..
while I understand the problem from a systemic level it doesnt change a little girls reality…
And since this plus size body did not develop simply overnight…I always thought I should hate what I see, based on my mothers own reflection
when she saw herself…
even though that perception was distorted it was the lie that was told as easily as my favorite bedtime story….
the layers upon layers of self talk & self reflection that I had to do just to ensure my own sense of self worth was kept in tact required two degrees & I’m contemplating a third…
While that woman is my BEST FRIEND & i would fight until the ends of the earth over her, I am also real enough to recognize her faults,
While I wish I could say something profound, like this is now but an afterthought,
that would be an untruth…
what would align more with reality is my indication of the fact that this poem,
is probably the FIRST time I verbalized these thoughts &
that I have become very good at perpetuating the same stigma of generational
SILENCE…
Sam Pierstorff
Executive Director, Modesto Artists Movement
Member, State Theatre Board of Directors
Professor of English,
Modesto Junior College
435 College Ave.
Modesto, CA 95356
209.575.6183
TT/IG @njapoet
