Herring
By Glenn ShaheenSomebody suggested I buy pickled
Herring in wine sauce— it didn't sound
Like a bad idea, all these conversations
Mired in capital's sloughed-off flesh.
Calling poets to a greater role in public life and fostering a national network of socially engaged poets.
By Glenn ShaheenSomebody suggested I buy pickled
Herring in wine sauce— it didn't sound
Like a bad idea, all these conversations
Mired in capital's sloughed-off flesh.
By Roya Marshcups, plates, scattered
spaghetti massacre on laps.
all the restaurant alert
&this ga'damn tv
sayin' WE lost!
white girls vanish
the whole world grit they teeth,
but a black girl's disappearance
warrants city wide curfews;
a second silencing
60 black girls ghost //
in the nation's capital
&my phone never rang about it!
By Faylita HicksCrawling out from between the legs of a woman
with my name still wetly slathered across her chin,
I cradle the lewd silk of our venom
up against the hot swell of my caged chest, wade out
through her front door, into the murky billows
of the damned and the damnable,
By Ashna AliOn an assemblage of screens on another firework evening
Ruthie Gilmore reminds us that abolition is not recitation.
By Deborah A. MirandaThe people you cannot treat as people
Whose backs bent over your fields, your kitchens, your cattle, your children
We whose hands harvested the food we planted and cultivated for your mouth, your belly.
By Dasha Kelly HamiltonPaintball pellets batter shoulders
and thighs at 190 miles per hour
I count the purplish bruises and
smile at the post vision of us toasting
By Kimberly BlaeserScientists say my brain and heart
are 73 percent water—
they underestimate me.
By Tamiko BeyerDear child of the near future,
here is what I know—hawks
soar on the updraft and sparrows always
return to the seed source until they spot
By Nathan SpoonYou are living inside the cup of another life. Water
is running slowly. Somewhere a hand is overflowing
with the abundance and celebration denizens dream of.
By Carlos Andrés Gómezwhisper through tear gas—
remind of the original
patrols, ruddy-cheeked