Currency
By Fred Joinera pocket can sometimes be
a kind of prison,
I have never lived in
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Spam’s Carbon Footprint
By Craig Santos PerezCraig Santos Perez performs the poem "Spam's Carbon Footprint" at the 2016 Split This Rock Poetry Festival.
Grease & Salt
By Jeanann VerleeI finish a small hot plate of grease & salt, & push the scraped-clean plate across the counter for someone else to scrub / this, I say I have paid for but it doesn't fit
THE MOTEL CLERK’S SON DRIVES OUT TO CHECK ON BUSINESS, 1977
By Allison Pitinii DavisBefore him, stickers fade across the bumper:
LAST ONE OUT OF TOWN, TURN OFF THE LIGHTS.
The last employer in Youngstown is the weather:
the truck behind him plows grey snow to the roadside
2001 Mill Road, Alexandria, VA
By Marcos L. MartínezThere are immeasurable ways to count days: on the median the sunflower tracks UV streams: east to west then sleep; an acorn gets weeded out of the common area ‘til another live oak drobs a bomb then sprouts till, yanked away again;
Makers
By Pamela AlexanderWe didn’t waste them. We used the trees
to build, to burn. Some jungles
got in our way, and animals, especially bears.
The American middle class ...
By Dawn Lundy MartinThe American middle class is screwed again but they don’t know it.
Politics is a gleaming nowhere. Žižek fantasizes about Capitalism’s
inevitable end.
The Love for My Culture
By Elexia AlleyneMaybe it’s the Spanish running through my veins
That’s the only way I know how to explain it
Maybe it’s the r’s rrrolling off my tongue
See,
Looking for a Job
By David EbenbachWhat you want, at least, is the dignity
of a Sisyphus—you want to see yourself
on a hilltop, your muscles and hands
afire and chest roaring for breath, and
The Newer Colossus
By Karen FinneyfrockMy feet have been wilting in this salt-crusted cement
since the French sent me over on a steamer in pieces.
I am the new Colossus, wonder of the modern world,
a woman standing watch at the gate of power.