Stephani Maari Booker's Blog, page 2

A poem and a publication for Juneteenth

The Inlandia Institute, a nonprofit literary organization located in and focused on the so-called “Inland Empire” of Southern California east of Los Angeles, has published a new anthology, These Black Bodies Are…A Blacklandia Anthology, of writings and art by people of African Descent from all over the U.S. and beyond. I am honored to say that three of my poems, “Hope Fool,” “Cashier” and “Whole Numbers,” are among the written works in this new book, released on Juneteenth.

Also released on Juneteenth is an early draft of “Whole Numbers” that I wrote for the Minneapolis 2020 Census Project. I recorded this video in 2020 for the project, and then I uploaded it on my YouTube channel and set it to “private,” waiting until I could get the poem published to release the video to the public. That day has come, so click on my photo above to see me read the poem.

Happy Juneteenth!

Rappin’ for Danez Smith and the Cave Canem crew

I had the fortune to be one of the poets chosen for Cave Canem’s Minneapolis Regional Workshop on “Laboratory Poetics” taught by National Book Award-nominated poet Danez Smith. The 12-week workshop held at the Minneapolis writing center The Loft was an educationally and emotionally uplifting experience of learning and communing with other poets of African descent. The workshop ended with a public reading for the poet students and the teacher in May.

One of the in-class writing assignments was to write rap verses starting with the line “I roll with…” Even though I haven’t attempted writing a rap verse since I was a teenager, a wild, Dirty South-swinging, Memphis gangsta walk-inspired rhyme (I lived in the Southern metropolis for five years) just poured out of me. When I read my verses to the class, they were almost as amazed by it as I was.

When it was time to pick two-to-three poems to recite at the public reading, I decided to shape up and add verses to my in-class rap, title it “Steph’s Cypher” and use it as humorous final rhyme to read after two more-serious poems.

In his introductory speech at the reading, Danez Smith mentioned some of his favorite moments from the workshop classes, and he included my reciting of my rap! When it was time for me to read, after my first two poems I introduced “Steph’s Cypher.” At hearing I was going to read my in-class rap Danez, who was sitting right in front of me in the audience, got excited and broke out their phone to record me. I spit my verses to a wildly responding crowd. Even the ASL interpreter on the screen behind me looked like she was having a good time with my rhyme.

Last week, Danez Smith sent to all the workshop students a cloud-storage folder link to photos from the reading — and the video of my rap. They have graciously given me permission to post it on my YouTube channel (content advisory for foul language).

Thank you, Danez Smith, Cave Canem and all my Laboratory Poetics classmates. May we all take our poetry work to the next level.

My story on the biggest speculative erotica anthology podcast in the universe

I have been a fan of erotica writer and editor Nobilis Reed since discovering his work in the Coming Together charity erotica anthology series. I had contributed a story to Coming Together: Girl on Girl, and all contributors had free access to ebook copies of other books in the series. Two favorite Coming Together books of mine are Arm in Arm in Arm and In Flux; they’re both edited by Reed and are collections of sci-fi/fantasy/horror, or speculative fiction, erotica. Speculative erotica brings together two of my great reading loves, so of course I had to give writing that kind of fiction a try.

For three years in a row, I participated in the Black speculative fiction magazine FIYAH’s Voices on FIYAH event in which writers would pledge to generate a certain amount of words in speculative fiction over the month of November to create a total of at least 50,000 words; this was a play on the National Novel Writing Month’s 50,000-words-in-one-month competition. To make my participation all about writing for fun and not profit, I dug up an old story beginning I wrote in one of my notebooks when I was a college undergraduate. The story was derived from the Afro-Asiatic myth of King Minos, his Queen Pasiphaë and the bull that was the sire of the infamous Minotaur. I changed the setting of the myth from Crete to an imaginary island of multicultural people, eliminated Minos and made my Queen Pasiphae and her family Black.

The full Pasiphae draft I created for Voices on FIYAH is 20,000 words, but I created a 4,000-word short story separate from that manuscript to shop around to erotic journals and anthologies. This month, I scored a publisher: Nobilis Reed has created an audio podcast of my story and posted it on Nobilis Erotica, what he calls “the most prolific erotica podcast in the known universe.” This is the first time I’ve had writing of mine turned into an audio work.

“Pasiphae’s Lover” is now available for free listening and downloading. If you want an ad-free version of the podcast, go to Nobilis Reed’s Patreon page and support him there. He pays his writers and story readers, so your patronage puts money in the pocket of many creative people like me.

Shut down the Minneapolis trash burner

I am appealing to Twin Cities-area folks to sign a petition to the Hennepin County Board of Commissioners to have a definitive shutdown date for the trash burner in Downtown Minneapolis, called HERC, as central to its zero waste plan. I’ve been involved with local environmental justice activists in this cause for over a year. My wife and I live less than a mile and a half away from the trash burner, where nearly half of the non-recycled, non-composted waste in Hennepin County is burned next to North Minneapolis, a majority BIPOC neighborhood with the highest asthma hospitalization rates in the entire state of Minnesota.

We are homeowners who have chosen to live in North Minneapolis, a community that has too long been victimized by concentrated poverty, predatory lenders and landlords, and racism in many forms. The emissions of burning trash from all over the county goes straight into the lungs of North Minneapolis residents like me, my wife, and my neighbors of multiple races, ages, and economic statuses. We North Minneapolis residents should not have to bear the burden of breathing in half the trash of Hennepin County.

The trash burner, Interstate 94 and State Highway 55 all contribute to the environmental racism and classism suffered by my North Minneapolis home. Industrial and automotive pollutants from these sources have a cumulative and detrimental effect on the health and wellness of my neighborhood. Here’s a link to a movement to change Highway 55 in North Minneapolis back to the original Sixth Avenue North residential street. Additionally, here’s a link proposing removing parts of the aging I-94 that runs through Minneapolis and St. Paul to create a neighborly, low-traffic boulevard.

Celebrating Black LEGO Creators

Late last year I bought two books cheap from my fave mail-order bookstore, hamiltonbook.com: Beasts from Bricks by Building Black: Civilizations creator Ekow Nimako and Brick X Brick by Adam Ward, who did Lego Masters USA building tips videos on Lego's official YouTube channel last year.

Both these Lego artists/creators are men of African descent, and the Lego website has Nimako featured on a page called "Celebrate Black Creators." In 2021, I had a profile article and interview with Nimako published on the Brick Architect website.

Just in time for Black History Month, the Brick Architect has published my review of Nimako’s and Ward’s books that compares their differences in content, style and target audience, plus one favorite build from each book. I am so happy to have found another topic to write about for the Brick Architect; I am especially proud to publicize the work of Lego lovers of the African Diaspora like me.

Enchanted Highway & Yellowstone National Park filmstrip

An unidentified plant growing out of gray gravel in Yellowstone National Park.

I’ve created a new filmstrip video of photography by me and my wife of our 2017 vacation. While visiting family who were living in Dickinson, North Dakota during the oil boom, we went to drive along the Enchanted Highway of metal sculptures built by artist Gary Greff in North Dakota. We also went to the Enchanted Castle hotel/restaurant that Greff also built and operates in Regent. Plus, we actually ran into Gary Greff at his establishment, and he gave us a tour! (Sorry, no photos of the interior of the Enchanted Castle were taken.)

From North Dakota, we drove to Yellowstone National Park and spent a few days exploring as much as its wonders as we could. Among the attractions we saw and photographed were Old Faithful geyser, Mammoth Hot Springs, two or three waterfalls and a petrified log, as well as American bison and other animal and plant life.

A poem for environmental justice

Flint, Michigan water plant tower, photo courtesy of Wikipedia

Here’s another late publication announcement (here’s why), but the publishers were late on posting my work, and others, after they announced it. In April 2022, the St. Paul Almanac publicized the winners of its Environmental (In)justice in Mni Sóta Maḳoce (Minnesota) Storytelling Contest held in collaboration with the University of St. Thomas Sustainable Communities Partnership. A poem of mine was one of the six winners; I announced it here in my blog.

The contest holders quickly paid us winners our prizes, but our works were not published until December. Here’s the direct link to my prize winning poem, dedicated to all us environmental injustice-surviving “Children of Michigan.”

I’m so nice, they chose me twice!

I’m late in making this announcement (see my last blog for why), but I am proud and amazed that for the second time a story of mine has been chosen to be included in a Best Lesbian Erotica of the Year volume. Volume 7 of the long-running erotic short story collection series was released December 6. On Dec. 15, I participated in a online reading with editor Sinclair Sexsmith and four other contributors. It was great to see and hear especially Sinclair, who thought my writing was so nice they chose me twice! At least two of the readers were BIPOC along with me. Once again, Sinclair as an editor has ensured that BIPOC representation in a BLE volume is maximized , not tokenized, with at least eight of the 20 writers that I know of being part of these communities.

December: a poem in progress

The title to this blog entry refers to both an actual poem I’m working on and the general state of my mind and heart at this time. I’ve had some recent professional wins that I haven’t done any or much flogging on the Internet for because this past month I’ve had deaths in my family that I needed to mourn and participate in grieving rituals for. Above is a photo of sympathy flowers and a card I received from my retail job coworkers and managers for the death of my wife’s mother. I also lost my last maternal aunt recently.

December is one of the deadliest months of the year, according to many studies. December is the month of the darkest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere as well. Living in Minneapolis, the northernmost state of the Union outside Alaska, I am also suffering through another arctic-level winter snow and below-zero-Fahrenheit freeze.

Growing up having to walk and catch buses to school in Michigan while dressed in Kmart winter gear, I have always hated winter with the heat of a thousand suns that I wished I carried within me to stay warm. Here in Minnesota, the winter is so much worse — longer, colder and darker: My mom noticed after she first moved here in around 2000 that the sun in the winter here never rose to the top of the sky at midday. I told her it’s because we’re so far north that the sun stays low in the winter. In my mother, and in myself, winter darkness can trigger depression. We each have our own ways of fighting off that drop in our moods.

Today, I have the funds to buy winter wear that can withstand the frigid temperatures, plus I have a car so I can choose not to catch a bus. I have a home that I can afford to heat and to insulate to conserve energy. Still, winter’s darkness, coldness and deadliness always threatens to pull me into its frigid void.

Homemade food & drink love

I started gardening in my late 20s with the land on my now ex-fiancée’s home property. As a kid who grew up in a housing project and a duplex with no real yard, I didn’t have any opportunities or inclination to grow anything. However, when my ex bought her first house, she encouraged me to start planting things in select areas of her front and side yard. One of the things we planted were tomatoes; we bought some plants from a local, independently owned nursery. The owner of the nursery advised us to plant the tomato vines with kelp, Epsom salt and natural fertilizer to make the fruits taste sweet. I had always heard that homegrown tomatoes taste better than store-bought ones; as I wrote in my flash nonfiction piece “The Finicky Eater,” I grew up detesting tomatoes, but the ones my ex and I grew were a mind-blowing revelation for my taste buds: tomatoes really are sweet and delicious!

Later on, after my ex broke up with me and I went on to buy my own first house, I started removing the turf grass, covering the yard with wood chips and planting perennial flowers and herbs. I had no interest in mowing or maintaining grass, so I put in years of hard work and trial-and-error to create a turf-free, flower-full yard.

Years later, my wife and I now live in a house with a bigger yard. Along with wood chip covering and perennial planting, I acquired tomato plants from a number of free sources, including Craigslist’s and nextdoor.com’s freebie listings. This year, I got at least 10 tomato plants for free, so many that I had to plant some in my front and back yard. This resulted in a bumper crop that I knew I’d have to do something with because I wouldn’t eat them up fast enough for them to all stay fresh.

My next-door neighbors to the south of my house have a chain link fence that they use to grow vine plants; most of the time it’s some kind of cucumber, either the green ones most Westerners are familiar with or the Chinese yellow cucumber. Many of the fruits of their vines spill over into my side of the fence, and the neighbors let me know that anything that grows on my side are mine to keep. I’m not a cucumber fan, but I am a pickle fan, so I decided to teach myself how to make pickles.

My wife has experience making and canning jam, so with her advice and three instructional videos on YouTube, I turned the neighbors’ cucumbers into dill and garlic pickles (pictured in the above photo collage, left). I was so proud of my work; I gave jars to my pickle-loving oldest niece as well as my sister.

For two years, I harvested cukes from my neighbors’ vine and made pickles. This year, the vine didn’t really fruit; I still have one jar of pickles left from last year though. However, this year I had my productive crop of tomato vines, so I figured I could can and preserve them as well. Again, YouTube is my teacher and my wife my guide in this endeavor. It turns out that canning tomatoes is simpler than making pickles; there’s no need to cook up a brine like with pickling. I’ve made two pots of pasta with sauce made of whole tomatoes thanks to my canning work. In the center image above, there’s one jar of my canned tomatoes.

On a seemingly unrelated topic that I’ll connect with this blog’s theme, I discovered an alcoholic drink (via the Costco liquor store) called limoncello, a lemon liqueur of Italian origin that’s only recently been available for sale in the U.S. I love citrus, so limoncello has become a favorite drink of mine, usually mixed with a clear sweet soda pop such as 7-Up.

Another alcoholic beverage, or really beverage maker, I discovered online is Du Nord Social Spirits, an independent distillery that I can barely believe exists: founded and based in my Minneapolis hometown, and owned and operated by African Americans! Upon learning that this Black unicorn exists, I went to their website to find where their products are sold. The list on the website isn’t very reliable, I learned, so I decided to just check out any nearby liquor stores whenever I ran errands or did grocery runs. I scored on one trip: a liquor store next to a Joann Fabric & Crafts store I was shopping at had two of Du Nord’s products. I bought their vodka, then I had an idea: make my own lime-oncello!

Now like I said, I love citrus but I am madly obsessed with lime! It’s been a lifelong passion, from lime-flavored Kool-Aid to lime sherbet, to 7-Up and Sprite, to limeade made with bottled lime juice, sugar and water, to just taking a slice of fresh lime and sucking it into my mouth. After I discovered limoncello, I joked with my wife that if they ever made lime-oncello I’d become an alcoholic.

With the bottle of Du Nord vodka, I had the first ingredient to my boozy fantasy. An online search later, I had two recipes that I used to begin the process of making my lime-oncello. First, I needed lots of limes to zest, preferably organic ones that aren’t coated with wax like citrus fruits in the grocery stores usually are, so off to my co-op store I went. Along with limes, I picked up a Meyer lemon and an exotic, small, round lime with a very thick rind that I forgot the name of to add a little variety to the flavor. I then zested all the fruits and dumped the rind bits into the vodka bottle. I covered the bottle and let it sit for about three weeks, shaking up the mixture every day or two.

Meanwhile, I had all this zested citrus fruit that I needed to do something with. Limoncello needs about a cup of sugar syrup mixed in once you’re done letting the vodka-and-zest mix age, so I found a recipe online for making a sweet citrus fruit syrup. Basically, I juiced all the fruit into a pot, added a cup of sugar and cooked it. When I was done aging the vodka-and-zest mix, I strained out the zest as I poured it into a bowl, added the cooled syrup to the mix and then put it into a bigger glass bottle and corked it. I then let that bottle sit for about two weeks. When that waiting period was done, I poured the new lime-oncello into the Du Nord bottle (see the image above, right). I left the extra liqueur in the big bottle, and then put the Du Nord bottle in the refrigerator to chill since limon(lime-on)cello is best enjoyed cold.

The result: OMG, it smells and tastes so good! I sipped it straight from a shot glass first, then later mixed it with soda water. I don’t think I’m ever going to buy limoncello again now that I can make my own lime-oncello.

For a person who grew up not growing anything in a garden or doing any homemaking crafts like canning, I’ve grown to make a lot of homemade love (apologies to the late J. California Cooper) in food and drink.