New Poet Laureate in Burque

You probably know, I mean how couldn't you.  Hakim Bellamy was named the first PL of ABQ.
I got to be there and be surprised, though there was no drum roll except in my stomach, and Mayor Berry just let the sleepy cat out of the bag.  And I had been so careful not to find out.  Like not knowing the ending of a football game you had prerecorded.

But still, that didn't take away the joy at being there, getting to read, and feel the absolute right choice being made.  There they are, Levi Romero, Stewart Warren, Susan McCallister, Don McIver, Mindy Grossberg, Mayor Richard Berry, Hakim Bellamy, Me, and Valerie Martinez.  We have two SF PL's, one mayor of a growing western city, one Centennial poet since we are 100 this year as my mother would have been and the Titanic,  four poetry activists, an esteemed group.

I am noticing that I used to be tall and in the back row. Something has changed.  Thanks for noticing my green decor, I got these dynamite green jeans at St. Vinvcent de Paul.  But enough about me.

I am going to try and paste in Hakim's speech:  By gosh, I think I did it.

I rode the train home, so windy you couldn't see the Sandia Mountains, not even a smudge where they belonged.  I was just so happy and singing inside, too tired to tell the Sex in the City beautiful lawyers from Houston who worked in immigration rights and could have been my new RailRunner best friends, how happy I was.  I made it home, breezily.  I was so tired, you'd think I did something.

I want to tell Hakim, that he has already been doing the work.  I know that I just did my life to the nth power, no back burner, on steroids.  I got asked to do a lot more things, some great fun like the Santa Fe High Graduation keynote and Joan & the Giant Pencil (one tomorrow!!), and some deeply odd.  But I think I enjoyed almost every one.  I only lost my voice at the end of two.  Note to self:  Don't read at the Cooperage on graduation weekend.

But do go to Odes & Offerings and the listing of PL events at Santa Fe Arts Commission website. Don't go on Sunday or Monday as the gallery is closed as many people have been telling me.

Michael Namingha of the Arts Commish is tweeting my haiku to folks to drum up good applicants for Santa Fe's next PL.  Nobody tweets me because I just learned to text.  I have a new motto, gleaned from the work at the Community Gallery.  "Text is the new Next."  I think it's catchy.  ABQ has a motto, "On the page, on the stage."  I like it.  I like everything about it, except how short I look in the line-up.