Calling poets to a greater role in public life and fostering a national network of socially engaged poets.
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By emet ezelli bought her a shitty ass chicken sandwich.
$18.59 and dripping with oil—
my grandmother. she blessed
the meal for ten minutes before
taking a bite. poured out devotion like
gasoline. like pepsi cola. we knew then
that she was dying, but i lived
in the first paragraph, unprepared.
By Aurora Levins MoralesWhy do they call us "the patient"
We are not patient. We endure.
By Leigh SugarI knew it was something bodies could do, disobey –
a girl a grade above had died that fall
of the cancer I was being tested for in winter,
By Janlori GoldmanHis face stared out into the living room
of my grandparents’ walk-up on E. 13th.
After they died my father hung him
By Shira ErlichmanThe Former Poet Laureate of the United States
wrote an eighty-nine line poem about clouds & I
want to write about clouds but all I can see
is this bruise on the inside of my inner-elbow the needle left
when posing a question about my toxicity level.
By Elana BellWhat else to call the way the bare branches
I’d bought at the neighborhood bodega
came back to life that winter.
By H. MeltWhether it’s raining
or snowing, midnight or
you’re awaking from a nap,
working an eight hour shift
or watching reruns,
By Jonathan MendozaYou ask me for my name,
and I say, “It’s pronounced Mendoza,”
and again, the Spaniard spits it out my throat,
pats me on the tongue,
tells me I have been a good subject,
and again, I have traded this empire
for my former one.
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By Jessica JacobsArkansas is aspic with last-gasp summer, making running
like tunneling: the trail’s air a gelatin
of trapped trajectories.
By sam saxsometimes i wonder what happens to people’s hands when they disappear
in their pockets. of course, my rational brain knows they go on being hands
but there’s still the question. i wonder if object permanence isn’t the biggest
trick of them all, a scam, a way to ground the brain in its thin bath of liquid