Poet and AAPW editor Gabriela Jauregui reads from her debut collection of poetry Controlled Decay at the Poetic Research Bureau in Glendale. In addition to crowd favorite poems like "Get On Down to the Floor to the Heaven of Other Animals" and "Collective" (about the metro system in her hometown of Mexico City), Gaby varied the reading with humor in her Lokus (the opposite of Haikus), tragedy "After Goya (and Fallujah and Kigali and Juarez and Da Nang and Wounded Knee and Tiananmen and Cali and Compton) which is one of my favorites, and new works from a manuscript called Beast Language.Shout outs to the Poetic Research Bureau, an amazing and much-needed new space. The big crowd that turned out on a scorching afternoon. And to poet Ara Shirinyan who helped Gaby open the reading with a hilarious duet. His latest book Your Country is Great is probably my favorite book of the year. You must read it and trust me, you'll be hearing much more of him in AAPW later this year.
