Calling poets to a greater role in public life and fostering a national network of socially engaged poets.
By Ching-In ChenMy people – I see you across street, porch people, huddled under brick archway, watching what pours from sky. Wading in water, what circuits it carries – mostly numb, small, what might feel like circuit’s end.
By Laura Da'I do desire—Chillicothe, Piqua, Lima
that you remain—Shawnee, Lawrence, Olathe
Wyandotte, Tecumseh—on the other side
Junction City, Fort Leavenworth, Lenexa—
of the river.
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By Ely ShipleyThe neck of the guitar stretches
out, every other fret painted with a sharp
dot or dash, flash after flash
of reflected light, marble or pearl, the shape
of a fingerprint, ...
By Tara HardyThey call it dissociation.
I call it THE NINE (children)
who live inside me.
Each of them encased
in amber, frozen in a mosquito-pose
By Lena Khalaf TuffahaBehind the walls of your jails we wait
heartbeats audible now, muffled thuds
above the current of blood running thin
By Anastacia-Reneethe cedar tree could not comprehend
the crime could not comprehend a leaning
a lynching a love gone wrong
By Esther LinAfter learning his appointment was canceled
and his senior bus won’t come for another two
hours my father calls from his waiting room
By Sarah Maria MedinaLearn to attend the fire, learn that breath between stones & flames lets the fire burn. Notice her breath, give her breath from your mouth, heated from your pink tongue.
By Karen FinneyfrockMy feet have been wilting in this salt-crusted cement
since the French sent me over on a steamer in pieces.
I am the new Colossus, wonder of the modern world,
a woman standing watch at the gate of power.
By Oliver de la PazThe way is written in the dark:
it has steel in it, something metallic, a gun,
a mallet, a piece of machinery--
something cold like the sea, something,