Calling poets to a greater role in public life and fostering a national network of socially engaged poets.
By Gordon CashYou scream your bullhorn lies, intimidate,
Harass, respect no law of man. You speak
Of scalpels, sutures, and sterility,
Dismemberment, death by regret, all lies,
And bear false witness with each one against
By Abby Minor1. [July 2013 Millheim, Pennsylvania]
This is how you miscarry on purpose, with pills:
this is how you eat a sack of tattered peonies.
With stippled petals in your mouth, this is how
you set the little sunset-
By Ross GayThere is a puritan in me
the brim of whose
hat is so sharp
it could cut
your tongue out
By Caits MeissnerI am 13 hours in the future & it is night / the rain is holding her breath
my friend, isn’t Penang opening to us! / a lotus unveiling a carnival
the paper lanterns are skirts / or balls pushed along by tiger’s nose
our smoke is a canon / dare devil on its way to an unnamed star
By Jan BeattyI see you’re publishing:
straightman/straightman/white white white how
nice.
Are you kidding me?
By Tanya OlsonWhat else should I want. But to
be a boy. A boy. At his mother’s hip.
A boy between. His father
and the plow. A boy to remain.
What else.
By Martha Collinsstock strain family line
breed blood skin shape
of the head of the pack
By Charlie BondhusAt the mirror I heft
elbows, belly, cock,
say hematocrit—44.3; hemoglobin—15.2;
neutrophils—62; monocytes—5.
By Karen SkolfieldIt's right next to a Polariod booth.
The instructions say the needles are small
and barely felt. The pictures, it explains,
have nudity, but no gratuitous nudity.
By Susanna LangShe had planned to offer peaches with the tea.
August was warm; the fruit had ripened to perfection.
She’d placed two paring knives on the cutting board,
set out the teapot with nasturtiums painted on the side.