excerpt from “the black maria”
By Aracelis GirmayAracelis Girmay performs an excerpt from the book "The Black Maria" at the 2016 Split This Rock Poetry Festival.
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Mothers of Murdered Sons
By Dominique ChristinaDominique Christina performs the poem "Mothers of Murdered Sons" at the 2016 Split This Rock Poetry Festival.
Aunty Mary and Her “Friend” Ruth, 1910
By Sarah SansoloYou wear the faded muslin—
did it begin yours or mine?
Everything we have is both.
Everything we are is both,
Enough!
By Luis Alberto AmbroggioPoetry might never have seen
that categorical word,
but in its charged belligerence
of emotions and in its profound determination,
There Is a Lake Here
By Clint SmithThere is a lake here.
A lake the size of
outstretched arms. And no,
not the type of arms raised
Grease & Salt
By Jeanann VerleeI finish a small hot plate of grease & salt, & push the scraped-clean plate across the counter for someone else to scrub / this, I say I have paid for but it doesn't fit
Song of the Exiles
By Holly KarapetkovaThere never was a garden
only a leaving:
miles and miles
of footprints in the dirt.
Pennsylvania ave SE
By Taylor JohnsonBless the boys riding their bikes straight up, at midnight, touching,
if only briefly, holding, hands as they cross the light to Independence.
Bless them for from the side the one on the red bike looks like me
his redbrown hair loose against the late summer static heat.
THE MOTEL CLERK’S SON DRIVES OUT TO CHECK ON BUSINESS, 1977
By Allison Pitinii DavisBefore him, stickers fade across the bumper:
LAST ONE OUT OF TOWN, TURN OFF THE LIGHTS.
The last employer in Youngstown is the weather:
the truck behind him plows grey snow to the roadside
2001 Mill Road, Alexandria, VA
By Marcos L. MartínezThere are immeasurable ways to count days: on the median the sunflower tracks UV streams: east to west then sleep; an acorn gets weeded out of the common area ‘til another live oak drobs a bomb then sprouts till, yanked away again;