Calling poets to a greater role in public life and fostering a national network of socially engaged poets.
By Vincent ToroA lung lit like diesel
is not fable or fodder.
Is not sewage siphoned from stern
and starboard. Cuffs, not slapdash plums
plunge from your garden
By Leslie Anne Mcilroy(1) to form by heating and hammering; beat into shape, as in the child’s back
burning, shoulders of flame, ribs of shame till she is no longer what she
was, but what you want her to be; 2) to form or make, especially by
concentrated effort, as in pride, see the girl, my girl, take credit, look what I
By Kazumi ChinThe very last mammoth was just like the others,
except more lonely. The very last tortilla chip
makes me feel guilty.The very last line
of the poem changes everything about
By Fatimah AsgharThe names of my family members swirl
like dust in my lungs. I try to write about birds
& only pull from my pen animal skin.
My bones alive & a lament of dignified grief
By Camisha JonesThis body is one long moan
My feet a landscape of mines
My legs two full pails of water I spill
at the weight of
My back where the sharpest knives are kept
My hands a scatter of matches ready to spark into flame
By Kathi WolfeIn an elevator trapped
between the fifteenth and sixteenth
floor of her apartment building,
Sunday morning, Elizabeth, her cane
By Ellen McGrath SmithI wanted bad to advance to Washington, D. C.
I wanted to be anyone but me.
The nun who had trained me for the spelling bee
needed a ride, and I was so worried all the way across town
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By Naomi AyalaNaomi Ayala performs the poem "Within Me" at the 2008 Split This Rock Poetry Festival.