Calling poets to a greater role in public life and fostering a national network of socially engaged poets.
By Monica SokA daughter of survivors stands in the grass among tattered military tanks. She is the only one in her family who wants to visit the museum. Siem Reap, Cambodia. Nov 2016.
“Loud little weed eater.” A worker cuts the grass and the noise activates the scene of a battlefield.
By Ryan Jafar ArtesIf
Mother + Father = Me
But
Mother + Father + Me ≠ Family
Then
Mother + Father - Me = Family
By Malcolm FriendWe work.
We are sometimes on time.
We are sometimes late.
We are sometimes
coming up with the excuses
for why we can’t make it
even as we know we have to.
Some of us are trying to be American
and some of us are trying to be boricua
and some of us are trying.
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 Samia Salibagolden shovel after karl marx, walter benjamin, richard siken, & zaina alsous
“the tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living”
- karl marx
in american cemeteries the dead overlap, the
hillside ostentatious in the catholic tradition.
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 Jaz SufiBORDER, from the Middle English bordure, meaning “the decorative band
surrounding a shield,” a heraldic device intended to identify
possession — this flag flies over that land, & so this land belongs
to…
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 Gauri Awasthimy friend is dying of an invisible darkness
it’s either depression or loneliness or plain facts:
a) Her cancer-smitten grandpa wants her to marry
b) We think she’s queer, but she can’t be sure
c) She has only two reasons to live and one of them
happens to be me.