Calling poets to a greater role in public life and fostering a national network of socially engaged poets.
By Rosa ChávezRi oj ab'aj xkoj qetal ruk'a k'atanalaj ch'ich'
Xk'at ri qab'aq'wach //
Las piedras fuimos marcadas con hierro candente
quemados nuestros ojos //
We, stones, were branded by hot iron
our eyes scorched
By Lois BeardsleeWhen I asked my mother
If she could remember
What her mother's mother called December
By Oliver de la PazThe way is written in the dark:
it has steel in it, something metallic, a gun,
a mallet, a piece of machinery--
something cold like the sea, something,
By Ailish HopperTension makes
a form resound
and so the many lines I am told
not to cross
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 Nadia SheikhI let Shane Kennedy
reach back in his desk
to fondle my calf,
soft and buttery
By D. GilsonThe honeysuckle dew slick
& sweet this morning
& only an empty Wendy's cup
thrown to ditch
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: