By Cheryl Caesar

(Editors note: The following is a book review by Cheryl Caesar of the book, “Pull Up a Chair by Tari Muñiz” published by Tari Muñiz and distributed by Goldenrod Publications)

 Tari Muñiz is a fierce and gentle spirit.

 I met her in 2018, at my first open mic at the Lansing Poetry Room. She sat next to me, a small, white-haired woman with big glasses. Then she got up and read “Fucking Pig Fuckers,” beginning “No offense to actual pigs / Fucking   Pigs   who are   Fuckers” and ending, “”Too fucking stupid to know / We are taking them down.”

I came to know her as a fellow board member of the Lansing Poetry Club, welcoming new faces at LPC’s monthly readings as she had done for me. I heard her stand up and read “Choice”:

By Craig Kirchner

Natural disaster, disease, bankruptcy

can reduce people to nothing, homeless,

hungry, no two stories are alike.

Man evolved as a specie realizing that

banding together was necessary,

sharing food, talents, and strengths to survive.

Remote tribes and outcast homeless Americans

live to survive – in jungles and on our city streets,

abandoned by family, friends, neighbors, us.

The wealthy could ease some of this problem,

see to a roof overhead, a meal, a hope that

tomorrow will be more than avoiding death.

By Lynn White

Soon we’ll be there

back

to those days

when Faubus was fab

when Klansmen were cool

and swastikas were chic not shite.