Calling poets to a greater role in public life and fostering a national network of socially engaged poets.
By Yesenia Montillaonce at eight years old I nearly gave myself a concussion running
my mother would braid my hair and wrap the ends in the heaviest
hair ties with the biggest colorful glass balls; they were lethal; as
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By Peggy Robles-AlvaradoShe insists three kids are more than enough
Puerto Rican Tías are missing wombs
Tells me I’m still young, more than “just a mom”
By María FernandaWe leave our leather. Finding a spot on Miya’s
living room floor, we untuck our bound things:
a borrowed yoga mat, a stretched hair tie,
By George Abrahammaybe if , ash & smolder way the – tongue own my in never but song this heard i've
– it birthed who fire the not & gospel become can , mouth right the in seen
By Rosemary FerreiraHabichuelas bubbling on the stovetop. The kitchen door opens to our backyard. My father cuts out a piece of the campo and plants it here in Brooklyn. There are neighbors who knock on the door with a broom to let us know they’re selling pasteles. The train rumbles into a screech in the background, “This is Gates Avenue, the next stop is...”
By Leticia Hernández-LinaresTus pómulos, the historic shape of your
temporal bones imitating the pirámides we carry, beating
blueprints inside of our lungs, stencil the heart
with the angles of the architecture we were born in.
By Amy M. AlvarezI keep thinking about Breonna Taylor asleep/ between fresh sheets/ I keeping thinking/ about her skin cooling after a shower/ about her hair wrapped in a satin bonnet/ I think about what she may have dreamed that night
By Destiny Hemphilllisten.
it’s in, not at. in the whistle & hiss, the steam of your breath as you chant
we ready (we ready), we comin (we comin) atop of a jail
building in ruins. yes, it’s in your breath & in the never dwindling
kindle of your fingertips as you reach out & touch
By Kimberly BlaeserBeginning with our continent, draw 1491:
each mountain, compass point Indigenous;
trace trade routes, languages, seasonal migrations—
don’t become attached.
By Carmin WongStart with something simple: 13 loosely lingering light-hearted lines that eventually morph / into crowbars ★ corps ★ prison cells ★ bylines.