Calling poets to a greater role in public life and fostering a national network of socially engaged poets.
By Gowri Koneswaran★ While planning your journey, accept that ethics are not included in the price of your ticket;
★ Tell yourself your currency is helping the country;
★ Do not question government control of the tourism industry;
By Jeanann VerleeI finish a small hot plate of grease & salt, & push the scraped-clean plate across the counter for someone else to scrub / this, I say I have paid for but it doesn't fit
By Holly KarapetkovaThere never was a garden
only a leaving:
miles and miles
of footprints in the dirt.
By Veronica GolosHave I stepped back in time, or forward?
A graveled road, hovering flags, the sound
of waves against chunk rock -- and
voices billow into birds,
By Allison Pitinii DavisBefore him, stickers fade across the bumper:
LAST ONE OUT OF TOWN, TURN OFF THE LIGHTS.
The last employer in Youngstown is the weather:
the truck behind him plows grey snow to the roadside
By Heather Derr-SmithThe fish are opened up like salad bowls,
Slid between the metal bars of baskets,
Roasted in the wood-fired ovens, Iraqi style.
The flesh glows as if it were made of glass.
By Marci Calabretta Cancio-BelloI fell in love with a North Korean
by falling asleep on his shoulder
in a South Korean subway.
By Lauren K. AlleyneWhere does a black girl go
when her body is emptied `
Of her? And her wild voice,
where does it sing its story
By Sarah Maria MedinaLearn to attend the fire, learn that breath between stones & flames lets the fire burn. Notice her breath, give her breath from your mouth, heated from your pink tongue.
By Safia Elhilloi was born in the winter in 1990 in a country not my own
i was born with my father’s eyes maybe i stole them he
doesn’t look like that anymore i was born
in seven countries i was born carved up by borders