Calling poets to a greater role in public life and fostering a national network of socially engaged poets.
By Nicholas SamarasWhat is that red throbbing over the sound of engines?
Why is a distant war still being talked about in the media?
I can't see my home or Iraq or the Middle East
outside this bowed rectangle of blue altitude.
By Elizabeth AcevedoRob, my heart is a peeled clementine and I don't wince
anymore when you stick your thumb in the hollow middle,
pull apart. You don't even swallow these pieces
By Tim SeiblesThere are days I believe there ain' nothing to fear
I perk up for green lights, my engine on call
But it could be the zombies are already near
By Rachel McKibbensThe Mad Girls climb the wet hill,
breathe the sharp air through sick-green lungs.
The Wildest One wanders off like an old cow
By Melanie GrahamShe appears again, 2-year-old riding her hip,
grief so great he can see through her birkha, past Qualaday,
into the kitchen, his mother nurturing chicken
in popping grease.
By Reginald Harriswalk long enough
with a pebble in your shoe
and walking with a pebble becomes
normal
By Rashida James-Saadiyawe scatter
dodge words that rip into flesh
hide from clenched fist
By Patricia MonaghanAfter the nightly news and four martinis
he quietly begins to draw the inner workings
of the bomb, knowing the explosion needed
By Jeffrey McDanielOn the red-eye from Seattle, a two-year-old
in the seat behind me screeches
his miniature guts out.
By Fady JoudahWhen the shooting began
Everyone ran to the trucks
Grabbed whatever their backs needed
And made for the trucks