The Drivers
Color-coded voices from my interviews.
These excerpts are signals, not conclusions. Themes overlap. Categories are porous. Memory rarely fits neatly into a single box.
● Place
● Loss
● Intimacy
● Web
● Identity
● Creativity
● Future
Place
"You can't google my hood."
Place Loss
"I think the last remnants of real San Diego reside at the trolley stations."
Place Web
Loss
"How do you phantom limb a street?"
Loss Place
"I once came across one of my father's many notebooks and found a journal entry about me. I was a baby, and he described watching me sleep. I taped it on the back of my door. I've never been able to find it again."
Loss Intimacy
Web
"If I type my current address into google and then street image the map, I can see Carol parked on the street in front of my apartment. There's probably a poem in there somewhere. Something about memory and google maps."
Web Place Loss
"I can't even find a picture of them on Google to prove they were real."
Web Loss
Intimacy
"I stepped on Zac Efron and Vanessa Hudgens everyday until their faces became indiscernible. I loved those shoes so much."
Intimacy Identity
"I never want a reader to feel like they know me because they read my poems. You may know some of my story, but I'd like to think there's more to me than words."
Intimacy Identity
Identity
"Whoever wants to become a Christian must first become a poet."
Identity Creativity
"I grew up to love ghetto."
Identity Place
Creativity
"I thought poetry was what you went to when you wanted to talk about what you thought god was."
Creativity Identity
"I begin a poem in a moment of anger or sorrow, and by writing the poem, I try to create something beautiful out of my abjection."
Creativity Intimacy
Future
"To the Roseland of the future: We'll always remember you the way you truly were."
Future Place
"San Diego of the future, my hope is that you still hold space for community, that you don't close yourself off. I want third spaces and gardens. I want more BIPOC owned businesses, small and thriving."
Future Place