Once again Pandora's Box is set to destroy your illusions, corrupt your understanding, smash your conceptions of what is possible to express. These poets are ready to alter the terrain of your brain, tear down the battlements in your mind. You cannot resist poetry like this! Come! Be exposed! Be subverted! Be inspired! February 17th. 8-10 Pm at Deep Vellum Books

Opalina Salas is a poet, a former Oak Cliff bookstore owner, an editor of femme lit zine, Let It Bleed, and creator and host of Poets on X+ reading series held in her beloved home of Oak Cliff TX. She has been a curator and hostess for many WordSpace events in Dallas and feels most at home on stage at any local open mic in her area. She is a regular contributor to The Mad Swirl, and was a featured performer at The Texas Beat Poetry Festival 2012, Forest Fest in Lamesa TX in 2011, and a participant in the first annual New Orleans Poetry Fest of 2016. She has been writing and performing in and around the DFW area for 20 years with her comrade, partner and fellow poet, Carlos Salas. Her only desire is to continue her pursuit of the open mic state, country and worldwide and to finally construct that one perfect poem. Until then, she continues.

Joaquín Zihuatanejo is a poet, teacher, and world poetry slam champion from Dallas, TX. His work has been featured in Prairie Schooner, Sonora Review, Huizache, NBC, and HBO among other publications and media outlets. He is a fourth semester MFA Candidate at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico where he studied under Natalie Diaz, Sherwin Bitsui, and Joan Naviyuk Kane, among others. He is the author of four collections of poetry and his fifth and latest collection, Fight or Flight, which is equal parts poetry and short fiction. Joaquín has two passions in his life, his wife Aida, and poetry, always in that order.

Gabe Mamola is a local poet and an English PhD student at UTA. You may be able to find him performing with the Bonehouse poetry group or Common Company. Otherwise, he is either off on a vision quest or grading papers somewhere. One of his poems is currently featured in the White Rock Zine Machine at Deep Vellum Books.