Calling poets to a greater role in public life and fostering a national network of socially engaged poets.
By Jill KhouryThe boy across the street points at me and lisps—now I know what they mean in books when they say children lisp. He wears a red and white striped t-shirt, addresses my friend who walks beside me. I ask people to please walk on my left side. It’s the eye that’s not completely dead I say. They always move over.
By Lisa Suhair Majajbecause wind soughs in the branches of trees
like blood sighing through veins
because in each country there are songs
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 Najwan DarwishFado, I’ll sleep like people do
when shells are falling
and the sky is torn like living flesh
I’ll dream, then, like people do
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 Brenda CárdenasThis body always compost--
hair a plot of thin green stems
snowing a shroud of petals,
By Natalie DiazIn the Kashmir mountains,
my brother shot many men,
blew skulls from brown skins,
