Intervention
By ChrysanthemumI hate the question: What would you say to your younger self? Too inexact. With what means? Through which technologies? Landline? Lie detector? Telepathy? Is it automatic? Call dispatch? Concierge? What’s the cost?
Calling poets to a greater role in public life and fostering a national network of socially engaged poets.
By ChrysanthemumI hate the question: What would you say to your younger self? Too inexact. With what means? Through which technologies? Landline? Lie detector? Telepathy? Is it automatic? Call dispatch? Concierge? What’s the cost?
By Zuggie TateWhen the sun greets well-slept eyelids
when the nail doesn’t break
when the voice doesn’t crack,
when the bus grandmother says hello sweetness
when she pulls a honeycomb smile from this hive of a mouth
when the door is held
when her favorite flowers bloom
By Ezra FoxThey say I killed you,
say they can pry o pen
my / your
dead / name
like a mussel finds nothing
but the ocean's black silt.
By Jimena LuceroI go out in public &
cis people tell me I risk my visible self too much.
But I think I’m just co-existing.
Earth practices liberation.
This is how I’ve led my body.
Naturally, I am bold!
By Cai SherleyBlake Brockington committed suicide in 2015 & last week the New Yorker’s crossword puzzle said “part of some transitions, colloquially” & i thought of bridges. i told my mother i would read the bible this year & she mailed me her mother’s copy with a note – please read with/for love & slipped a green flag into Book of Ezra & Psalm 23, where god lays me down in a green pasture & restores my soul. the answer was “HRT”, each line an arrow pressed into my soft throat.
By Jzl JmzI CROSS MY LEGS - I BRUSH
MY CLAVICLE / I PITCH MY
LAUGH - I LAUGH - I LOOK
AWAY / I SMILE
By Cass GarisonI adore the carnations & I adore
the trains, specifically the boxcars
with endings & beginnings I can’t
keep track of, who drag their stretched
torsos like absolute creatures around
what seems like earth’s clearest curve.
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 José Angel AraguzI knew nothing about poems
when I was introduced to
the woman selling seashells by
the seashore. Placed in a
remedial speech class, told
my S’s served no one,
I felt set aside in
the silence of clear hallways
where I walked slow, savoring
not being where I belonged.
By Raye Hendrixwhen my mother dreamed of children she pictured
things in bowls beautiful fish gracing over
brightly colored stones clear water a bowl of her favorite
fruits ceramic overflowing pears and tangerines
blueberries fat with sweet