Calling poets to a greater role in public life and fostering a national network of socially engaged poets.
By Denise BergmanShe is a neighbor a building away, we talk weather and potholes, exchange
names Mary same as her daughter or is she Marissa or Maria I was distracted
her nephew was chewing the leg of his doll and the day was disappearing before
By Richard BlancoAll of us as vital as the one light we move through,
the same light on blackboards with lessons for the day:
equations to solve, history to question, or atoms imagined,
By Richard BlancoThe Gulf Motel with mermaid lampposts
and ship's wheel in the lobby should still be
rising out of the sand like a cake decoration.
By María Luisa ArroyoMami called us away from the roach trap line
where novice factory workers, fresh from the island,
and I, fresh from Germany, poked
By Marie-Elizabeth MaliPulling out of Union Square station, the subway
sounds the first three notes of There's a place for us,
somewhere a place for us. A woman sits on me, shoves
By Naomi AyalaAnd now, where the moon
rose behind here,
three stories loom—
By Lori DesrosiersI was the wrong kind of bride,
more sweat than glisten,
more peach than pomegranate.
By Martha Collinsnot as in pin, the kind that keeps the wheels
turning, and not the strip of land that marks
the border between two fields. unrelated
By Lenelle Moïsethe children of haiti
are not mythological
we are starving