Spratly and Paracel
By Esther LinAfter learning his appointment was canceled
and his senior bus won’t come for another two
hours my father calls from his waiting room
Calling poets to a greater role in public life and fostering a national network of socially engaged poets.
By Esther LinAfter learning his appointment was canceled
and his senior bus won’t come for another two
hours my father calls from his waiting room
By Pat Parker (d.)I wish I could be
the lover you want
come joyful
bear brightness
By Minal HajratwalaYour rage is pomegranates spilling open on ice, is the flute’s thin silver seam, is a volcano spitting rivulets of fire to wash clean these corrupt lands.
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 Sarah Maria MedinaLearn to attend the fire, learn that breath between stones & flames lets the fire burn. Notice her breath, give her breath from your mouth, heated from your pink tongue.
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 Sholeh WolpéLast night a sparrow flew into my house,
crashed against the skylight and died:
I want to write a love song.
By Craig Santos Perezkaikainaliʻi wakes from her late afternoon nap
and reaches for nālani with small open hands—
count how many papuan children
still reach for their disappeared parents—
By Hari Allurithe tea in her glass. It glows the brocade.
Her grandmother picked that tea
on a mountain—a mountain in a war
whose shores were her bed. Steeping, the petals