Q. R. Hand Jr., Genny Lim, and Juan Felipe Herrera: February 24, 1983

Q. R. Hand Jr. opens the program, reading his poems: "Waiting for the Bus on Third Street, Hunter's Point," "Another Corner of the Market," "See the Slow Drag Before the Dawn," "Devolution," "A Quick Prayer For When They Have Pushed the Button," "Color My Bantustan Empty," "How Sweet It Is," "Unfinished Portrait of a Friend," "A Poem" ("for those who didn't make it this winter..."), "Capricorn," and closing with "Each Time" — "a poem I like very much.... It's kinda like a psalm."

Genny Lim opens by noting the death that day of poet and playwright Tennessee Williams, dedicating her reading to him. She then sings, a cappela, "Betcha By Golly Wow," and goes directly into her first poem, "Made in America," bookending it with another chorus of the song. She follows with "I Am an Erhu," then a poem beginning "She sits in a slip, mirror in hand...," "A Woman's Room" (that she notes is "a poem for Virginia Woolf"), "If Sartre Was a Whore," and "The Rape."

Lim talks about the break-up of the Bay Area Asian women's writers group Unbound Feet and their encounter with problems of social fragmentation, then reads "The Dialectics of Eve," followed by "Departure," "Ching Ming" (on the Chinese ceremony for sweeping the graves of family ancestors), "On Weening in America," and "Sunday's Child."

She then reads "For Miles, All Blues," and, recalling her dedication to Tennessee Williams, performs an extended dramatic monologue, "A Conversation With Ma," written and delivered in dialect. Lim then closes her reading by delivering her poem "A People's Prayer."

Juan Felipe Herrera thanks the program organizers and notes the band he's working with is named Troca — "a vehicle which is geared to make noise at the empire" — and that the musicians come from Sacramento, Fresno, "the Sunset barrio." Herrera talks about the belief in poetry's ability "to crack and destroy what oppresses us." Then, donning the first in a series of hats and masks, he presents a long work he calls "A Report" ("a report that I found... fragments from the rebellion") and is gradually joined by the musicians.

Herrera talks about "a fruit you can find in the Mission," and launches into "Papaya," following with "Children of Space" ("for children in the Mission"), and "Your Name is X" (dedicated to novelist Victor Martinez and Tina Alvarez Robles). He then tells about the Señorita Black Velvet Latina beauty contest, sponsored by Black Velvet whiskey, and reads "Senõrita Black Velvet Latina" in a solo  delivery, with much of the poem in Spanish. Herrera introduces the next piece via a question relayed by his friend, who's in the audience, poet, translator, and militant anarchist David Volpendesta, with the band returning for "Are you doing that new American thing?" 

Before their closing number, Herrera introduces the band members: Troca features John Martinez (congas), Allen Martinez (tumba), Manny Castillo (congas), Felix Contreras (timbales), Victor Contreras (electric bass), and Richard Martinez (electric guitar). A reading of "Mission Street Manifesto," dedicated to "the young brothers and sisters in the Mission" and written following "some deaths...youth" in the community, brings the show home, with the band stretching out.