Calling poets to a greater role in public life and fostering a national network of socially engaged poets.
By Sheila BlackSheila Black reads "My Mission is to Surprise & Delight" at the 2014 Split This Rock Poetry Festival.
My daughter works in the Apple Store--the Help Center, open 24-7,
people from all fifty states, angry because their iPhones
malfunctioned or they don't know how to program their data
By Brenda CárdenasThis body always compost--
hair a plot of thin green stems
snowing a shroud of petals,
By Danez Smithone is hard & the other tried to be
one is fast & the other was faster
one is loud & one is a song
By Tess TaylorThe ridge a half mile down from Monticello.
A pit cut deeper than the plow line.
Archaeologists plot the dig by scanning
By celeste doaksAaron and Anita, the first real twins I ever personally knew,
drum majored our ragged band in high school called--
the Marching LaSalle Lions. Anita was the outgoing,
By Natalie DiazIn the Kashmir mountains,
my brother shot many men,
blew skulls from brown skins,
By Dunya MikhailThrough your eye
history enters
and punctured helmets pour out.
By Steven CramerI hear the dinner plates gossip
Mom collected to a hundred.
My friends say get on board,
By Myra SklarewIn the mirror of infinite regress
go back. Go back to Vietnam. To a man
who can spot a trip wire fine as a hair,
By Reginald HarrisGet off here. This is a story you've
been told: these streets before the trash,
the rats, the crack-heads nodding to ghost