Calling poets to a greater role in public life and fostering a national network of socially engaged poets.
_139_134_c1_smart_scale.jpg)
By Tarik DobbsChorus: Like a bridge over troubled water…
For years, settlers longingly, vertical, build over us, Starbucks has no sinks. Will we go? Lately, the bridge, their throne. When even these are somewhere to watch from, to drop a knee & propose somewhere to feel for a bank.
By Natalie WeeI was born in 1993, the year Regie Cabico became the first
Asian American to win the Nuyorican Poets Cafe Grand Slam.
By A. Tony JeromeStanding in line, waiting to go into the Library of Congress
a black woman stands two people ahead of me and
a white security guard says to her,
It’s a beautiful day.
By Maren Lovey Wright-Kerrwhen the makeup aisle stops at “caramel”
it means
the makeup industry just thinks you already too pretty to need they products
By Kimberly BlaeserYes, it’s true I speak ill of the living
in coded ways divorced from the dead.
Why Lyla June fasts on capitol steps.
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 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