Mothers of Murdered Sons
By Dominique ChristinaDominique Christina performs the poem "Mothers of Murdered Sons" at the 2016 Split This Rock Poetry Festival.
Calling poets to a greater role in public life and fostering a national network of socially engaged poets.
By Dominique ChristinaDominique Christina performs the poem "Mothers of Murdered Sons" at the 2016 Split This Rock Poetry Festival.
By Sarah SansoloYou wear the faded muslin—
did it begin yours or mine?
Everything we have is both.
Everything we are is both,
By Clint SmithThere is a lake here.
A lake the size of
outstretched arms. And no,
not the type of arms raised
By Jeanann VerleeI finish a small hot plate of grease & salt, & push the scraped-clean plate across the counter for someone else to scrub / this, I say I have paid for but it doesn't fit
By Holly KarapetkovaThere never was a garden
only a leaving:
miles and miles
of footprints in the dirt.
By Taylor JohnsonBless the boys riding their bikes straight up, at midnight, touching,
if only briefly, holding, hands as they cross the light to Independence.
Bless them for from the side the one on the red bike looks like me
his redbrown hair loose against the late summer static heat.
By Veronica GolosHave I stepped back in time, or forward?
A graveled road, hovering flags, the sound
of waves against chunk rock -- and
voices billow into birds,
By Marcos L. MartínezThere are immeasurable ways to count days: on the median the sunflower tracks UV streams: east to west then sleep; an acorn gets weeded out of the common area ‘til another live oak drobs a bomb then sprouts till, yanked away again;
By Heather Derr-SmithThe fish are opened up like salad bowls,
Slid between the metal bars of baskets,
Roasted in the wood-fired ovens, Iraqi style.
The flesh glows as if it were made of glass.
By Marci Calabretta Cancio-BelloI fell in love with a North Korean
by falling asleep on his shoulder
in a South Korean subway.