Cheena Marie Lo Reading

About a month ago I had the pleasure of seeing my dear friend and collaborator Cheena Marie Lo read at a Small Press Traffic Reading in San Francisco. The theme of this year for SPT has been Genders/Bodie/Hybrids, and Cheena and I spoke a lot about what it meant to be billed in that theme on a night with two other Asian-American writers doing experimental work (Paolo Javier, and Cathy Park Hong). Cheena was ready to have a discussion about the problems in billing a night like that (the identification of them with one another, even as their work did not necessarily correspond, the differences between them, and the troubles with representation). The opportunity to have that discussion, however, didn't occur - a switch from last year's SPT readings with always included q and a's. I was spinning with questions and critiques of the organization and the world of experimental poetry and its alignment with supporting the subversive modes of poets of color not just doing expected experimental work.

All that said, I was, as I often am, super impressed by Cheena's work. They took a risk in what they read - new work, very personal, which took as an jump off point the mail that was coming into their home and the moment of looking for work that they find themselves in. In really gentle language that maintained a somewhat distant tone, Cheena bridged the process of beginning to wear a binder, with the foreclosure on their parents home, with a look at race underneath it all. It painted a picture which asked which of the intersecting forces of race, gender, classism, were affecting Cheena's moment of navigation of the economy and how each might intervene differently in each moment. I found it a profound and exciting piece, calling into question a simplicity too abundant in race analysis and poetry worlds. Plus, Cheena is a dear one, and I felt so proud!