Calling poets to a greater role in public life and fostering a national network of socially engaged poets.
By Amy M. AlvarezI keep thinking about Breonna Taylor asleep/ between fresh sheets/ I keeping thinking/ about her skin cooling after a shower/ about her hair wrapped in a satin bonnet/ I think about what she may have dreamed that night
By Kimberly BlaeserBeginning with our continent, draw 1491:
each mountain, compass point Indigenous;
trace trade routes, languages, seasonal migrations—
don’t become attached.
By Daria-Ann MartineauI find myself noticing you again
eight years later,
you coming out of the earth, pale,
erect, shadow over men.
You can’t be buried.
By Noor Ibn Najamto become earth’s sugar, to be a seedless
orange offered. to want fruit
to unwind from the concept of sex
By Justice Ameer/ he asks me how it feels /
it’s no simple curiosity
nor a question without consequence
phantom of longing lingers so
subtly on the last syllable
By Safia Elhilloi was invented by them the women
steamed & sweating in the kitchen
soft bellies a memory of money
fallen princesses headdressed in rollers
By H. MeltWhether it’s raining
or snowing, midnight or
you’re awaking from a nap,
working an eight hour shift
or watching reruns,
By torrin a. greathouseThe body scanner says my name & my flesh are suspicious
abandoned baggage. A voice on the loudspeaker says to report
any & all unaccompanied luggage it could contain anything.
Clothes, or drugs, or a body folded economically. Utilitarian
origami. Voice on the speaker says trust no one, says anything
could be a threat.
By heidi andrea restrepo rhodesfor you are made of light & flesh, voice & shimmer
no amount of scrubbing will eliminate the shine, you
luminesce, your tired heart
lingers in the dusky dawn liminal, blue
is the color of your name, a shade
in view now, harnessed in the eye centuries
By Tyler FrenchI was gelling my hair the morning before mounting the Pilgrim’s Memorial Monument
and I found a strand of yours in the blue goop, I wasn’t able to pluck it out so I slicked
the gel through my hair, forward from the back then up in the front and up again
and your black clipping was stuck in my cowlick for the day, I know it fell out