Final Dispatch from Laos
By Mai Der VangConcerning our hollow breasts,
Lice factions multiplying in our hair.
Concerning our unused stomachs,
Molars waiting to chew, taste buds
Calling poets to a greater role in public life and fostering a national network of socially engaged poets.
By Mai Der VangConcerning our hollow breasts,
Lice factions multiplying in our hair.
Concerning our unused stomachs,
Molars waiting to chew, taste buds
By John JamesIn Georgetown, IN, the steel projector reels.
The desert stretches blankly before us, a red
plain constellated with rows of dry mesquite.
By Heather Derr-SmithOne man said there are hundreds
of delicate articulated bones
in the human head. So don’t let it
get punched. Easier said than done.
By Rigoberto GonzálezRigoberto González performs the poem "In the Village of Missing Sons" at the 2016 Split This Rock Poetry Festival.
By Jan BeattyJan Beatty performs the poem "The Kindness" at the 2016 Split This Rock Poetry Festival.
By Heather Derr-SmithThe fish are opened up like salad bowls,
Slid between the metal bars of baskets,
Roasted in the wood-fired ovens, Iraqi style.
The flesh glows as if it were made of glass.
By Kyle DarganNaturally, the gun is purchased from a farm in Virginia—pulled from a bushel of barrels
by a tremorous hand, a young man’s. His other fist proffers sweat-wilted dollars. The
farmer, compensated, keeps his gaze down as to remember nothing of the boy’s face.
By Abby Minor1. [July 2013 Millheim, Pennsylvania]
This is how you miscarry on purpose, with pills:
this is how you eat a sack of tattered peonies.
With stippled petals in your mouth, this is how
you set the little sunset-
By Ross GayThere is a puritan in me
the brim of whose
hat is so sharp
it could cut
your tongue out