Prayer for those who run
By Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-SamarasinhaI wish you swift wind.
I wish you a changed phone number
that stays changed.
Calling poets to a greater role in public life and fostering a national network of socially engaged poets.
By Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-SamarasinhaI wish you swift wind.
I wish you a changed phone number
that stays changed.
By M. KamaraAnd a white person says racism is dead
and a white person jokes about slavery
and a white person lives unbothered
and a white person screams about immigrants
By M. Soledad CaballeroThe Cherokee are not originally from Oklahoma. Settlers forced
them to disappear west, into air and sky, beyond buildings,
beyond concrete, beyond the rabid land hunger. There was
a trail. There was despair. Reservations carved out of prairie
grass, lost space and sadness in the middle of flat dirt.
By Justice Ameer/ he asks me how it feels /
it’s no simple curiosity
nor a question without consequence
phantom of longing lingers so
subtly on the last syllable
By Trevino L. Brings PlentyTo acknowledge so-
cietal micro-systems
as a poet means I
will continue to be
emerging within an on-
slaught of the macro-
system submergence
operations.
By Mejdulene B. Shomalikept the name between gum & tooth
rolled it around like hard candy
cracked the shell of faith like sunflower seeds
spit out doubt & swallowed the sun
By Malik ThompsonMidnight is my first emotion, then starscream, bloodlust—
an impulse to sink my fangs into the nearest man’s
neck. Shotgun shells explode beneath my window,
dragging me from the grip of a ragged slumber—
the winds of this rotting city drenched in gunsmoke.
By Reuben JacksonI still call
The year 1963
Season of Nightmares
After Medgar Evers
Was killed I
Would lie awake
And wait for
My uncle Joe
To get home
By Jasminne MendezIt isn’t easy / to look / at what I have / cut. Which is to say — / wounded / from the body / of a tree / or a woman / or a child.
By Raymond AntrobusI was searched at every edge. I wanted everyone, including me, to be innocent. One inmate squeezed my hand like a letter he’d been hoping for.