March & April's Book of the Month: I Can Feel You Across the Seas

• Posted on 27 March 2026
• By Alan
• 0

A collection of poetry by San Francisco Youth Poet Laureate Cohort

On a Saturday evening in February of this year, a collection of in-the-know San Franciscans gathered at the main branch of our beloved public library to witness the relaunching of San Francisco’s Youth Poet Laureate program, brought back to life by a collaboration between some of the city’s finest voices in youth literature (us included). It was an incredible event full of unique works and passionate writers who broke ground with their poetry, leaving the audience moved by their words and their voices alike.

To those who missed the memo, however, fear not: we at 826 Valencia, well known for our publications of exactly this sort, have collected this coalition’s works into one easy to access volume so that you, too, may experience what the brightest young poets of this city have to give you. In I Can Feel You Across the Seas, you will be treated to a myriad of experiences from those who San Francisco has guided into vibrant expression. These poets sing of the connection between themselves and their ancestors, the complex dynamics of individual families, the desire to rebel against systems that want nothing more than to make them disappear, and the San Francisco Muni system, amidst too many other things to name.

When programs like this are being rapidly extinguished from our communities and taken away from the students that love them, it is imperative that we lift up the writers loud enough to criticize and celebrate in equal parts, never to let the new generation slip through the cracks when their works have so much beauty to express and passion to behold. Even in experiences so individual, there is universality to be found in our shared humanity, and each poet has something to connect to.

"And as I feel her tears hit my back and shoulders and drench my hair so it falls in front of my eyes– I tell her this: I love daylight savings time because I can wake up early enough to see her dark, naked body blush rosy-pink and ochre as she steps into her white-blue patterned gown. I love to watch the horizon as the ocean gently pushes his body against hers, the pair of white-blue expanses making love, slowly bleeding into each other. I love when I leave the city and I can sit outside in the cold pinch of night, look up and just see her, blemished with beautiful white and shining spots, and I can examine and admire her whole body, whole body, whole big beautiful body. I tell her this: that she is gorgeous."

- I Share A Sky With My Ancestors
Aisha Rae McCulloch