Calling poets to a greater role in public life and fostering a national network of socially engaged poets.
By YanyiThe teacup with the broken
handle: no longer missing.
Arriving in my mother’s hand
as she sets it down for service.
Then the dish in the air touches
down at its place on red carpet
and the Fisher Price karaoke mic
rights and repairs itself.
By Adrian Gaston GarciaHe says that he’s too embarrassed to ask me for this favor
But in his Spanish it sounds sweeter, more innocent, almost childlike
He sets up his station at the dining room table:
A paper towel and two different set of nail clippers
He folds the paper towel in half
before placing his withered and wrinkled hands on top
He lets me hold them
I cannot remember the last time we held hands
By Jzl JmzI CROSS MY LEGS - I BRUSH
MY CLAVICLE / I PITCH MY
LAUGH - I LAUGH - I LOOK
AWAY / I SMILE
By Lehua M. TaitanoHere are the ones I think will come: Wren, chestnut backed chickadee, hairy woodpecker, scrub jay. Words of a dream retold dissolve into pulp, into seed glue. Into chips of memory. This morning, I’ve a soft waxwing in hand. We are both stunned. His eye is cast beyond currents or cadence.
By Quenton Bakerevery cloud that rolls off the ocean
pours my dead on me
the mad
the sick
the brave
the faceted
who chose the wave over their making
By Ryan Jafar ArtesIf
Mother + Father = Me
But
Mother + Father + Me ≠ Family
Then
Mother + Father - Me = Family
By Malcolm FriendWe work.
We are sometimes on time.
We are sometimes late.
We are sometimes
coming up with the excuses
for why we can’t make it
even as we know we have to.
Some of us are trying to be American
and some of us are trying to be boricua
and some of us are trying.
By Cass GarisonI adore the carnations & I adore
the trains, specifically the boxcars
with endings & beginnings I can’t
keep track of, who drag their stretched
torsos like absolute creatures around
what seems like earth’s clearest curve.
By Mia S. Williswhen the state murdered a poet
none of us slept none of us deserved to
the way we stood by with pens and phones and helpless guilt
By Taylor Alyson Lewisthere once was an island love or magic resurrected
where they could go to rest and look at
each other plainly and hold one another’s
hands and play music in their cars so that
the bass reverberated through the mountains
and down into the ocean and live.