Casandra López reads Benjamin Garcia's "Birds of Illegal Trade"

What's good fam. If you're caught up, you know we sat with Casandra and discussed grief, community, obsessions, and writing across genres. This week, she brought in a lovely poem "Birds of Illegal Trade" by Benjamin Garcia, and, here, you can hear us geek out over it!

CASANDRA LÓPEZ is a Chicana and California Indian (Cahuilla/Tongva/Luiseño) writer who’s received support from CantoMundo, Bread Loaf and Jackstraw. She’s been selected for residencies with the School of Advanced Research and Hedgebrook. Her chapbook, Where Bullet Breaks was published by the Sequoyah National Research Center and her poetry collection, Brother Bullet is forthcoming from University of Arizona. She’s a founding editor of As/Us: A Space For Women Of The World  and teaches at Northwest Indian College. You can follow her on Twitter @casandramlopez. 

BENJAMIN GARCIA is a Community Health Specialist who provides HIV/HCV/STD and opioid overdose prevention education to higher risk communities throughout New York’s Finger Lakes region. He had the honor of being the 2017 Latin@ Scholar at the Frost Place and the 2018 CantoMundo Fellow at the Palm Beach Poetry Festival. His work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in, among others, New England Review, American Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner, Puerto del Sol, Nimrod International, RHINO, Four Way Review, Newfound, The Acentos Review, Barrelhouse, Lambda Literary, Boston Review, Kenyon Review Online, Best New Poets 2016, and Gulf Coast.