Calling poets to a greater role in public life and fostering a national network of socially engaged poets.
By T. J. Jarrettits ruthless syntax, and the ease with which it interjects
itself into our days. I thought how best to explain this—
this dark winter, but that wasn’t it, or beds unshared
but that isn’t exactly it either, until I remembered
By Teresa ScollonLook how you've carried these small bodies
across the ocean, looking for the next one
to hear the story. Look how gently you laid
these children down at the fire where stories are told.
By Persis M. KarimTake their limbs strewn about the streets—
multiply by a thousand and one.
Ask everyone in Baghdad who has lost
By Don ShareJuly kindles the redneck in me.
I blaze down Interstates
that are viaducts for my beery nerves
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 Michelle Regalado DeatrickWhen I sweat in a Midwest January
and wish to God it was a hot flash but know
it's greenhouse gasses--read the news:
By Kenji LiuSharp tenure of boots in this callow country
grown from open skulls. A raw harvest of bullet casings
arranged in a perfect ring around you,
By Patricia MonaghanThey were always taught that all guns were loaded.
It was a way, he said, to keep them safe.
Don't you notice, he said, how people get shot
By Samiya BashirBrother I don't either understand this
skipscrapple world that is--these
slick bubble cars zip feverish down