Calling poets to a greater role in public life and fostering a national network of socially engaged poets.
By Kyle Carrero LopezIn 1994, U.S. Senator Bob Torricelli (D-New Jersey) introduced the Cuban Democracy Act, designed to “wreak havoc on that island.”
I’ll wreak havoc on that island I’ll ravage
that island I’ll plunder
that island see torn asunder that island
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By Robin GowSomeone I love is turning into an asterisk
and so I am running and the vultures are
as hungry as they’ve ever been. The size of genders.
The size of fatherhoods.
By Vievee FrancisA WOMAN AT THE BOOKSTORE READING
WONDERS HOW I MADE THE LEAP FROM MY FIRST BOOK
TO MY SECOND WHICH WON AN AWARD
She wants me to know how “different” my poetry is
one book to the next, preferring my second book that leaves her
blameless
By Arumandhira HowardWe are made shy / sun, kissing another heartless / night awake. We are made satin silking / pompon locs. Cotton, banana pudding, baby’s / breath. These cornbread thighs, our blessed butterfly / knives. We are made to de-stem hardened men like bull-headed / bougainvillea.
By Tonee Mae MollThe font, not the nation, nor the southern state where lawmakers are folding the idea of the monster of my body into votes from folks whose homes they know are marked for flooding. I suppose I mean typeface—I’m supposed to remember the difference— like all exquisite things, we’ve got this etymology that feels apocryphal anyway. Anyway, let’s suppose I am a transitional shape.
By Opal MooreA small bird built a secret nest
beneath my balcony. There must be
hatchlings there, out of view.
She flies back and forth, small prey
in her beak.
Some kind of wren, I think.
Small, brown and quick. No time for
singing midday. Duty
is her instinct.
By Jada Renée AllenThere’s a light, a certain
kind of light that has never
shone on me—
Nina’s version.
Not the Bee Gees
or even Janis Joplin,
but the way Nina
sings it, almost a plea.
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 Joanna Acevedo“I just wanted to check in with you about your friend who passed,” my therapist says at the end of our session. “Yeah, he’s still dead,” I quip. We share a long laugh.
By Ghinwa Jawhariwho loved my mother owned a shop on almira street & hung
among the glamorous posters of arabic singers, a black-and-white
photograph of muhammad al-durrah’s murder.