Library

Alameda Reads

2203 Central Avenue, Room 350- upstairs
Alameda, CA 94501-4421
510-865-2454

alamedareads@alamedaca.gov 

Library Board

The City of Alameda is honored that Kimi Sugioka has been appointed by the Mayor to serve as Alameda's Poet Laureate. Ms. Sugioka has been an active poet since 1990 and has published two books of poetry, The Language of Birds and Wile & Wing. Ms. Sugioka has also taught poetry and writing to elementary and high school students in the Bay Area.

The woman breathes, by Kimi Sugioka
Her breast swells in
dream in
detritus in
perilous
fracture

The woman holds
the child
the long spoon
the tired baby
the old man’s hand
the worry
like a kettle
on a 400,000
year old fire

The woman arranges
flowers
spices
contrives
encounters
decoys

The woman sings
with scythes
and sibilant
ruminations

She toils, sweats
becomes
one of the many
her
incarnate
presence
addresses
calamity
with temperance
and nests inside
morning
creates prayer
with scimitar
and samovar
erases the blood stains
over and over

She of nightingale
and anaconda
radiant
empath
and soldier
blazing blues and
radical orations
of the precocious grey whale
the gregarious grey wolf
seeking sanctuary
creating sanctity
with breath