from THE BLACK MARIA
By Aracelis GirmayBeloved, to
day you eat,
today you bathe, today
you laugh
Calling poets to a greater role in public life and fostering a national network of socially engaged poets.
By Aracelis GirmayBeloved, to
day you eat,
today you bathe, today
you laugh
By Katy Richeymust be tight
spiral wound
corset of rope
be body and
undertaker be
By Dominique ChristinaWhen the sun is pitiless
When the girl is a gust of get out fast
When the boys are forced to mingle with the forest
When the baby, still nursing leaves her mother
By Tanya OlsonWhat else should I want. But to
be a boy. A boy. At his mother’s hip.
A boy between. His father
and the plow. A boy to remain.
What else.
By Martha Collinsstock strain family line
breed blood skin shape
of the head of the pack
By Mahogany L. Browne& then the poet became G_D/like
just’a rolling his tongue everywhere
like G O D must’ve
when the earth got birth(ed) & even
By Alison Roh ParkMy daddy's hands were scarred
and through the smallest details escaped
years ago I remember them a strong
brown like here is the axe that missed
By Karen SkolfieldIt's right next to a Polariod booth.
The instructions say the needles are small
and barely felt. The pictures, it explains,
have nudity, but no gratuitous nudity.
By Susanna LangShe had planned to offer peaches with the tea.
August was warm; the fruit had ripened to perfection.
She’d placed two paring knives on the cutting board,
set out the teapot with nasturtiums painted on the side.
By Karen FinneyfrockMy feet have been wilting in this salt-crusted cement
since the French sent me over on a steamer in pieces.
I am the new Colossus, wonder of the modern world,
a woman standing watch at the gate of power.