love isn’t
By Pat Parker (d.)I wish I could be
the lover you want
come joyful
bear brightness
Calling poets to a greater role in public life and fostering a national network of socially engaged poets.
By Pat Parker (d.)I wish I could be
the lover you want
come joyful
bear brightness
By Jennifer BartlettJennifer Bartlett performs an excerpt from "The Hindrances of a Householder" at the 2016 Split This Rock Poetry Festival.
By Jen Hoferwhat dateless body what we exacted or nixed or hexed in the eternal present of not being able to – what not being able to not be considered garbage or trashed by the bag
By Lorenzo Herrera y LozanoBrown is the color of my god’s skin.
Gentle, curvy, older than a Spanish whip.
My god abides outside of sin,
no water needed to baptize the newly born.
By Catherine KlatzkerThe world was always a place of silence,
of congenital shame—even before those days
in 1967, four years before you met your love. Your
strength grew belatedly, fertilized as it was in the
knowledge that you were nothing. Your life did
not matter to anyone, except to hurt you.
By Anna Maria Hongout of this world & out of time & out
of love & out of mind & out of the
pan & out of butter, out of anger
& out of mother, out of the cradle
By Ross GayThere is a puritan in me
the brim of whose
hat is so sharp
it could cut
your tongue out
By Ariana Brownyou said you held a gun first / then a girl / & both begged for mercy / & you are afraid / of your own
body / of the hands that are their own haunting / the coal / bursting through / your glowing skin / black
By Caits MeissnerI am 13 hours in the future & it is night / the rain is holding her breath
my friend, isn’t Penang opening to us! / a lotus unveiling a carnival
the paper lanterns are skirts / or balls pushed along by tiger’s nose
our smoke is a canon / dare devil on its way to an unnamed star
By Fady JoudahDoes consciousness exist only when
you name it? Was the double helix a
stranger, the nucleus the first brain?
I feel therefore I am. This is more