Calling poets to a greater role in public life and fostering a national network of socially engaged poets.
By Raye Hendrixwhen my mother dreamed of children she pictured
things in bowls beautiful fish gracing over
brightly colored stones clear water a bowl of her favorite
fruits ceramic overflowing pears and tangerines
blueberries fat with sweet
By Dujie TahatPops bought a ‘78 Pontiac,
a firebird-stamped gold bar
on wheels, spontaneously,
after a conversation with
an aunt’s friend—so it went.
By S. J. GhausNearby a spring lamb wobbles
like a song on its first feet, while
somewhere in the same field a lamb dies
in its mother’s womb. This season is all
one choir, the geese on the roof, the ticks
in the grass, the shadowy black
of sunflower seeds oversleeping
in my pocket.
By féi hernandezSimultaneously I am
alone and crowded, this…
the pulsing wound of being extinct,
whole
enough for a morning forage,
yet scant for the onlookers
of lineage,
of nation,
myths in the mulberry tree.
By Cynthia ManickHow does it feel to be something man hasn’t touched? Nothing
feeds your shape – how tall you want to aim, the texture from
root to tip, or the colors you choose to shake off like makeup.
It must be nice to have no load bearing walls – nothing to hold
you down or box in all you want to be.
By Gbenga AdesinaNorth of the country, a road led to the desert.
Dust was the first sentence. The Sahara
was a white darkness in the distance,
and beyond it the glint of a Great Lake.
We drove past fields of ginger and wild purple onions.
There was a public garden and a ring of white egrets
around still water.
By Dare WilliamsAt the Best Western, he arrived in a Ford
with its burned-out back. We spent the day
driving while he pointed at ruins
of cars gutted on the dead lawns.
By Ariana Bensona week before I left the sinking city, I read
about a fruit fly with decoy ants on its wings—
an evolutionary adaptation, bred
evidence of what happens when a species clings
so desperately to life that it makes for itself
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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 mónica teresa ortizI wake up sleepless inside a room overlooking giants//mist peeling over olive trees//clouds of pleasure