Calling poets to a greater role in public life and fostering a national network of socially engaged poets.
By Carolyn ForchéCarolyn Forché reads "The Museum of Stones" at the 2008 Split This Rock Poetry Festival.
These are your stones, assembled in matchbox and tin,
collected from roadside, culvert, and viaduct,
battlefield, threshing floor, basilica, abattoir–
stones, loosened by tanks in the streets
By Aracelis GirmayWhen the boys are carnivals
we gather round them in the dark room
& they make their noise while drums
ricochet against their bodies & thin air
By Jamila WoodsPoems are bullshit unless they are eyeglasses, honey
tea with lemon, hot water bottles on tummies. I want
poems my grandma wants to tell the ladies at church
about. I want orange potato words soaking in the pot
By Sheila Maldonadoyou come from greatness
remember that
you are the descendant of great kings
remember that
By Venus ThrashEver since my next-door neighbor stopped
in front of the stoop, unfolded The Post
to her son's smiling face, I've been obsessed
with the Obits page.
By Lois BeardsleeWhen I asked my mother
If she could remember
What her mother's mother called December
By Beth SpencerIn the atrium of the principal church
in a certain Irish city
it is said a girl can find beneath a bench
among the tea roses the name of an abortionist.
