Calling poets to a greater role in public life and fostering a national network of socially engaged poets.
By Karla Corderoi watch slasher movies but hate the sight of real blood leave the body
i panic on planes & think of ways the machine or sky
will betray me i read books in fear to evaporate
out of this world without seeing its soft hands
By Adela NajarroI have learned to speak dementia
by looking straight into her eyes
smiling, laughing, then digging deep
By Travis Chi Wing LauI shrug off my messenger onto the floor and forget to kiss you when I walk through the door.
By Leigh SugarI knew it was something bodies could do, disobey –
a girl a grade above had died that fall
of the cancer I was being tested for in winter,
By Margo TamezThe weather in Brecksville was in transition.
He was wearing a light jacket. The seasonal
change of weather variations,
By Janice Lobo Sapigaowe don’t know how to pay the bills on time
and we don’t know the password to your bank account
& in all of our languages I understand why you stacked
linens and face towels and rubber bands and plastic bags
in drawers and hallway closets
everything filled to the brim
By Mahogany L. BrowneInstead
Make it a cup of coffee
The espresso percolator wheezing on
The biggest eye
On the stove
By Pacyinz LyfuongThe day I learned to speak my grandmother’s tongue
An Eastern wind shifted the earth
While the western walls were whisked away…
And the mountains of Laos rose on the horizon,
By Angelique PalmerTrying to find faith
in a world that is slowly killing me and blaming me for why they can’t do it right
or why survival might be the only thing in the way of enjoying life
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By Jessica JacobsArkansas is aspic with last-gasp summer, making running
like tunneling: the trail’s air a gelatin
of trapped trajectories.