Category: Poetry

Sometimes you mean to go to a reading series that sounds cool, but you put it off, and a year goes by, then two, then three and four, until finally, when you actually go because it’s the week between Christmas and New Years so you’ve got the time and even traffic in L.A. isn’t too bad, you walk into the event and there’s free champagne and mini cupcakes because it’s the reading series’ eighth anniversary.

Which is to say: Hitched has been around the L.A. literary scene long enough to become a standard feature. The quarterly series was started by local poet Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo (pictured above), who back in 2010, was a recent MFA graduate from Antioch University Los Angeles. Since she knew a lot of faculty mentors from her grad program — and also knew their writing mentees — Xochitl got the idea to start a reading series that featured literary pairings: mentors and mentees, teachers and students, collaborators and collectives, and other writerly partners. “It’s a celebration of those relationships,” she said. 

The series started out at Beyond Baroque in Venice but has since roamed around different locations across the city. The final event of 2019 was held in Other Books, a brightly-lit and eclectically curated book, comics, and record store in Boyle Heights. A couple dozen people filtered in bundled up in coats and rubbing their hands — it was a blustery night in the mid-fifties — mostly ignoring the treats, perhaps already maxed out on holiday indulgences.

I wasn’t. I had two mini cupcakes: one chocolate, one vanilla. Then Xochitl took the mic and introduced the first pair, Rocío Carlos and Rachel McLeod Kaminer, who’d collaborated on a just-published book of poems called Attendance (The Operating System).

Rachel read first (sample line: “A year like this passes so strangely somewhere between sorrow and bliss”), then Rocío took the stage. Her lavender hair matched the lavender book, and the poems she read were sprinkled with lavender (sample line: “Make me lavender, you said to her).

Every writer’s work this night incorporated Spanish words and phrases, which most of the audience seemed to understand, judging by the small murmurs of assent. I did not, though for the most part I could follow along (though does anyone else have the issue of zoning out during poetry readings, regardless of language?). The beginning of Xochitl’s website bio reads, “Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo is a first generation Chicana,” and Hitched reflects Xochitl’s effort to seek out similarly marginalized voices.

Poet Sara Borjas got up next. “I’m gonna read what I’m calling an essay, but it looks like this,” she said, and thrust out a sheet of paper toward the audience. It had fragments of writing segregated into individual small boxes on the page. She started reading; the essay was loosely about her mother’s gastric bypass surgery (sample line: “Her body anchored her to our house.”) but touched heavily on themes of Chicana identity and authenticity. I learned one Spanish word — pocha, a pejorative term used to describe Chicanas deemed too Americanized — that Sara used as a refrain throughout the piece.

Sara’s pair, poet Ruben Quesada, had gone to Chicago for Christmas and ended up staying longer than planned, so the last reader was a last-minute addition: Sonia Guiñansaca, a queer, migrant poet in town from Harlem for the holidays. Xochitl read an exuberant bio (“One of the 13 coolest queers on the internet according to Teen Vogue!”) then Sonia went up to applause.

“This is a poem for all the migrant folks in the room,” she said, then performed a long, expressive poem from memory (sample line: “I call it old school. Some call it poverty.”).

Afterwards Xochitl begged the audience to eat, drink, mingle, and buy books. Rachel and Rocío stood around the front, holding their twin books and smiling. “What was the collaborative process?” I went up and asked, and Rocío said it had happened after the two of them finished their MFAs at Otis College of Art and Design. They decided to check in with other once a week about their writing, and out of that, a book was born. 

I commented on the lavenderness of Rocío hair, book, and poems. “Did you plan it?” I asked. “No,” she said, laughing. Then she touched her hair. “I don’t even know how it looks right now!” 

She spotted a mirror in the corner, walked over to to it, and gently patted loose strands into place.

Hitched. Quarterly, times and days vary (check Facebook for new events), Los Angeles.

Read more: 11 literary reading series in Los Angeles