Amistad
By Abdul AliMy father and I run into each other at the edge of Lower Manhattan,
World Trade Center, where there’s a movie house.
We tiptoe down the slope, making our way to our seats.
Calling poets to a greater role in public life and fostering a national network of socially engaged poets.
By Tara Shea BurkeWhen we met we fell for each other like leaves.
Behind black curtains your bedroom was always dark
except for unexpected soft-yellow walls. Your dogs
By Marie-Elizabeth MaliBalancing on crutches in the shallows
near her mother, a girl missing her right lower leg
swings her body and falls, laughing.
By Persis M. KarimTake their limbs strewn about the streets—
multiply by a thousand and one.
Ask everyone in Baghdad who has lost
By Nicholas SamarasWhat is that red throbbing over the sound of engines?
Why is a distant war still being talked about in the media?
I can't see my home or Iraq or the Middle East
outside this bowed rectangle of blue altitude.
By celeste doaksAaron and Anita, the first real twins I ever personally knew,
drum majored our ragged band in high school called--
the Marching LaSalle Lions. Anita was the outgoing,
By Lisa L. MooreWord got out about the bad bill.
College students packed up their bikinis,
went back to Austin to tell those men why
By Jericho BrownThey said to say goodnight
And not goodbye, unplugged
The TV when it rained. They hid
By Daniela ElzaI drink a blood sunset down Cardinal Avenue.
my shoes soaked poppies my mind quiet as
a book with a bomb in its mouth.
By celeste doaksTell them it's always under attack. Tell them there's no cure
for the disease, or answer to the riddle. Tell them you asked many
before you, some who won, some who lost.