Calling poets to a greater role in public life and fostering a national network of socially engaged poets.
By Nathan McClainOn one of those evenings you found yourself walking back, now that much of what daylight was left had moved on, as though some argument had long been settled and nothing lay ahead but a row of muted streetlamps and the future, of course, immediate, shimmering which, let’s face it, you were always going back to despite any guilt you still carried like a flashlight
By Adeeba Shahid TalukderTonight,
the beloved ascends
the rungs of stars;
seated on a mirrored
cushion, she is both spectacle
and witness,
both of the mehfil
and its all-seeing god.
By Rena PriestWe tell our children stories
to keep them by our side:
Basket lady will get you.
She’ll put you in her basket
and carry you away,
deep into the forest
By Moncho AlvaradoAgain people are being taken away,
I read the news of kids
like your daughter & son,
like our family, our neighbors,
they wake in a state of temporary,
that lasts longer & longer &
longer than we can remember.
By Kay Ulanday BarrettHoy! Listen, This is how to cut ginger, it’s a root, she said from
Chicago basement on first snow of the year. It’s the 90’s. Snow is
a big deal. Tear salt missing ocean salt, she cleared her throat.
Based on where we’re from, nothing can prepare us for frozen.
Fast forward: college friend asks How do you make that tea again?
The one you used to drink when it started to snow.
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 jason b. crawfordand because this is a poem about joy, it too must have a river flowing
from its greedy jaws. i have only learned how to speak about joy
as an offering to a god i will never understand.
By Glenn ShaheenSomebody suggested I buy pickled
Herring in wine sauce— it didn't sound
Like a bad idea, all these conversations
Mired in capital's sloughed-off flesh.
By Sacha Marvin HodgesI have a fear
so metal
it makes traffic
By Roya Marshcups, plates, scattered
spaghetti massacre on laps.
all the restaurant alert
&this ga'damn tv
sayin' WE lost!
white girls vanish
the whole world grit they teeth,
but a black girl's disappearance
warrants city wide curfews;
a second silencing
60 black girls ghost //
in the nation's capital
&my phone never rang about it!