Calling poets to a greater role in public life and fostering a national network of socially engaged poets.
By Taylor Alyson Lewisthere once was an island love or magic resurrected
where they could go to rest and look at
each other plainly and hold one another’s
hands and play music in their cars so that
the bass reverberated through the mountains
and down into the ocean and live.
By Dorsía Smith SilvaSurvival occupies us with our blank shopping carts
next to blank shelves. We grow desperate because spaces
are blank. A hurricane that leaves a bitter taste
as stores carry bare wrappers and blank sympathy.
By Jalynn HarrisAt the entrance, six copper pillars stand tall as a wave
as once did six-fingered Lucille. She lived here, too–
The light alone enough to fill the lake. I walk the park
because I’m weak. All flesh and fur needing
to get out my bark. My rough squeeze of please please
A red bird. Another mile. My feet eat the concrete.
By Ana Portnoy BrimmerThere’s so much to be learned from that which floats A patience
from the Gulf of Mexico to a sea of its name sargassum
drifts hand in hand with itself
By Dujie TahatPops bought a ‘78 Pontiac,
a firebird-stamped gold bar
on wheels, spontaneously,
after a conversation with
an aunt’s friend—so it went.
By S. J. GhausNearby a spring lamb wobbles
like a song on its first feet, while
somewhere in the same field a lamb dies
in its mother’s womb. This season is all
one choir, the geese on the roof, the ticks
in the grass, the shadowy black
of sunflower seeds oversleeping
in my pocket.
By Tuhin Das1.
I am a writer,
the light burns late
into the night in my room.
By Subhaga Crystal BaconThis is the anti-garden. It tends itself.
Its shine of blooms a blanket of sun.
It has its own water in hidden springs
bathing aspen, burdock and sage.
By féi hernandezSimultaneously I am
alone and crowded, this…
the pulsing wound of being extinct,
whole
enough for a morning forage,
yet scant for the onlookers
of lineage,
of nation,
myths in the mulberry tree.
By Aliah Lavonne TighEveryone in Anatomy pairs up,
receives a small baby pig.
The scalpel shines like water or a mirror—if you look, you see
yourself: gloved hand pushing a blade to open
the other animal’s chest. Someone drops
a knife, shouts,
Clean it up. This is how we learn to
dissect a body.