For Brown Girls
By Katy Richeymust be tight
spiral wound
corset of rope
be body and
undertaker be
Calling poets to a greater role in public life and fostering a national network of socially engaged poets.
By Katy Richeymust be tight
spiral wound
corset of rope
be body and
undertaker be
By Jan BeattyI see you’re publishing:
straightman/straightman/white white white how
nice.
Are you kidding me?
By Dominique ChristinaWhen the sun is pitiless
When the girl is a gust of get out fast
When the boys are forced to mingle with the forest
When the baby, still nursing leaves her mother
By Rigoberto GonzálezFulgencio's silver crown--when he snores
the moon, coin of Judas, glaring
at the smaller metals we call stars
my buckle
By Tanya OlsonWhat else should I want. But to
be a boy. A boy. At his mother’s hip.
A boy between. His father
and the plow. A boy to remain.
What else.
By Martha Collinsstock strain family line
breed blood skin shape
of the head of the pack
By Craig Santos Perezkaikainaliʻi wakes from her late afternoon nap
and reaches for nālani with small open hands—
count how many papuan children
still reach for their disappeared parents—
By Charlie BondhusAt the mirror I heft
elbows, belly, cock,
say hematocrit—44.3; hemoglobin—15.2;
neutrophils—62; monocytes—5.
By Geffrey DavisDuring the last 50 miles back from haul & some
months past my 15th birthday, my father fishes
a stuffed polar bear from a Salvation Army
gift-bin, labeled Boys: 6-10. I can almost see him
By Mahogany L. Browne& then the poet became G_D/like
just’a rolling his tongue everywhere
like G O D must’ve
when the earth got birth(ed) & even