by Michael Ahn

On September 19, 2024,  Jason Magaboz Perez’s L.A. launch of his second poetry collection I Ask About What Falls Away took place at Beyond Baroque, the oldest literary arts center in Los Angeles dedicated to expanding the public’s knowledge of poetry. 

I ask about what falls away is an extended elegy set in the alleyways and Pacific-bound boulevards of San Diego, California during the current global health crisis. Called “an antidote to despair” (Muriel Leung, Imagine Us, The Swarm) and poetry that “complicates notions of solidarity, community, and justice, distilling the quotidian into something sacred” (Rachelle Cruz, God’s Will For Monsters), Jason Magabo Perez’s second full-length book of poetry serves as an intimate grief manifesto against the daily violations of racial capitalism. Perez, 2023-2024 San Diego Poet Laureate, employs a critical and improvisatory assemblage of lyric and litany, narrative and distillation, fragment and refrain to map city, solidarity, and history.

With the aid of Kaya Press, Sampaguita Press, and the Digital Sala, the night was filled with readings from fellow poets in-person and through Zoom, as they celebrated Jason’s successful book launch by reading excerpts from their own work that would together create a consonant harmony about memory, identity, and kinship. Furthermore, the poets together made a powerful call to action against injustices in both the past and the present. Their united voice, condemning the wanton violence and atrocities that were inflicted onto Palestinians, created a solemn atmosphere that reminded everyone participating in the event that the joy of kinship also comes with the responsibility of compassion.

About the Readers: 

Jason Magabo Perez serves as San Diego Poet Laureate 2023-24. Perez is the author of Phenomenology of Superhero (Red Bird Chapbooks, 2016), This is for the mostless (WordTech Editions, 2017), and I ask about what falls away (Kaya Press, 2024). Perez’s work has appeared in Interim, Witness, The Feminist Wire, Marías at Sampaguitas, TLDTD, San Diego Union-Tribune, NPR’s Here & Now, among others. Recipient of a Challenge America Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, previous Artist-in-Residence at the Center for Art and Thought, and current Poet Laureate Fellow with Academy of American Poets, Perez has performed at notable venues such as the National Asian American Theater Festival, International Conference of the Philippines, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, La Jolla Playhouse, and Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions. Perez serves as a core organizer of The Digital Sala and as an Associate Editor at Ethnic Studies Review. Perez is an Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies at California State University San Marcos.

Hari Alluri (he/him/siya) is author of The Flayed City (Kaya Press), chapbook Our Echo of Sudden Mercy (Next Page Press) and, forthcoming, Tabako on the Windowsill (Brick Books). His award-winning work appears widely in print and online. Say here, say beyond. Word to Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh peoples and to the T’uubaa-asatx Nation, on whose unceded lands siya tries to practice kapwa-care at the threshold of grief & joy.

Maria Bolaños (she/siya/they) is the author of the poetry collection Sana; co-founder of Sampaguita Press; member of The Digital Sala; & co-organizer of the Filipino Canadian Book Festival. Maria’s work migrates them between Tongva, Ohlone, Musqueam, Squamish & Tsleil-Waututh lands, where she tries to be a good future ancestor by committing to radical spaces for the People’s art & healing, and building in community for a Free Palestine, land back, homecoming, and a liberated world.

Rachelle Cruz is the author of God’s Will for Monsters, which won an American Book Award and the 2016 Hillary Gravendyk Regional Poetry Prize. She co-edited Kuwento: Lost Things, an anthology of Philippine Myths with Lis P. Sipin-Gabon. The second edition of her comics text resource, Experiencing Comics: An Introduction to Reading, Discussing and Creating Comics, was published in 2021. Her work has also appeared in Strange Horizons, Poets & Writers Magazine, the San Francisco Chronicle, Yellow Medicine Review, among other publications.

David Maduli is a father, educator and writer. His work, often inflected by decades as a public school teacher and DJ, has received the Joy Harjo Poetry Prize. Born in San Francisco, he is a longtime resident of East Oakland where he completed his MFA at Mills College with a fellowship in Community Poetics. His double-sided collection Alemany Bay Window / Redwood Coast Record Crate will be published next month by Sampaguita Press.

Angela Peñaredondo is a queer Filipinx interdisciplinary writer and educator. Peñaredondo is the author of nature felt but never apprehended (Noemi Press), All Things Lose Thousands of Times (Inlandia Institute, Winner of Hillary Gravendyk Prize) and Maroon (Jamii Publications). Their work has appeared in The Academy of American Poets, Pleiades Magazine, Michigan Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. They have received fellowships and awards from Hedgebrook, Macondo, TinHouse, Monson Arts, and Fine Arts Center in Provincetown. They are an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at California State Univ