Calling poets to a greater role in public life and fostering a national network of socially engaged poets.
By Hieu Minh NguyenIf things happen
the way they are supposed to
my mother will die before me.
By Aricka ForemanWhen the hollow grows thick, she prescribes
20 mg to take every morning for four to five days,
then increase as tolerated. Take it with fish oil and
a book of artificial light, try not to repeat the question.
By Susan Eisenbergfor my asthma inhaler that
last year cost fifteen
I pause for the mom
By Tara BettsI am sitting in a café with my boy
that I have known longer than my
students have been alive, before the birth
By Keith Wilsonshall i tell you, then, that we exist?
there came a light, blue and white careening,
the police like wailing angels
to bitter me.
By Keno Evolthe night i was to meet my brother for the first time in 23 years he ain’t show / absence is not what comes up from that memory / more it was the dusk in September / how fog can hide a growl
By Danez Smithwe who were born into conundrum, came into the world as the world was leaving, children
of the ozone, the oppressed, the overlooked, of obtuse greed, of oil overlords, of oblong
definitions of justice
By Dunya MikhailOur clay tablets are cracked
Scattered, like us, are the Sumerian letters
“Freedom” is inscribed this way:
Ama-ar-gi
By Ross GayRoss Gay performs the poem "Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude" at the 2016 Split This Rock Poetry Festival.
