Calling poets to a greater role in public life and fostering a national network of socially engaged poets.
By Bettina JuddLucy didn’t scream like most. Though sometimes she
would moan--deep, long and overdue. I’d wake
thinking death. It’s her, knees curled under, head face
down, her body trying to move out of itself. Anarcha
By Julie EnszerThe painters call before we move into the new house. Ma’am, they say—
I am not old enough to be a ma’am, but I don’t correct them—
Ma’am, they say, we smell gas.
I dismiss their concern. I say, Keep painting.
By Sara BrickmanThey do not want me to be a river, but I am unstoppable.
I am the perfect instrument. Capable
of every sound, but here the only sound you hear under
me is No. Is, Please. The men
By Rachel Eliza GriffithsI remember the boys & their open hands. High fives
of farewell. I remember that the birches waved too,
the white jagged limbs turning away from incessant wildfires
By Joshua WeinerToday is Sunday.
Today, for the first time, they let me go out into the sun.
And I stood there I didn't move,
struck for the first time, the very first time ever:
By Kelli Stevens Kaneblueberry blackberry as always
bleeding, back road or boulevard,
our boy crowned with baton,
By Allison Adelle Hedge CokeIn a room facing chimneys
over the place Nancy Morejón rests
between sleeps lining free lines
she whispers to hearing DC:
By Sam TaylorAnd someone in a field found an old car
from the year black with beetles, eaten like lace,
and the sky fell into it, a private thing.
And everyone had a kitchen or a fold-out bed
By Wendell BerryWe forget the land we stand on
and live from. We set ourselves
free in an economy founded
on nothing, on greed verified
