Calling poets to a greater role in public life and fostering a national network of socially engaged poets.
By Mahogany L. Browneif my mother were ever convicted for her addiction like my father I wonder
who I would be robbing now
the data from the Fragile Families Study say
my kind of survival displays more behavioral problems
& early juvenile delinquencies
By Emmy PérezThey are the ones who were told their children
were taken to bathe—and not returned. They
are the ones whose nursing babies and toddlers
were forced to wean and left in wet diapers.
By Sheila BlackWe come at the wrong time of year by a hair
or a week, and the brown birds flying onward,
out of reach. My son tilts his head.
By Arisa WhiteEverybody she died another is dead everybody
dead and AIDS of AIDS my dead she is
there are more I know with the same story hiding
lips stitched hesitant to speak of someone you knew
By Nickole BrownWhen I press my face to the painted box,
the sound is
not buzzing, is not
a mob of wings.
By Deborah ParedezThe English translation of my surname is walls
misspelled, the original s turned to its mirrored
twin, the z the beginning of the sound for sleep.
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By Jessica JacobsArkansas is aspic with last-gasp summer, making running
like tunneling: the trail’s air a gelatin
of trapped trajectories.
By Shabnam Piryaeia young man desperately buries himself under damp leaves while helicopters hunt him police laugh as he tries to hide in the foliage a neighbor with a device to eavesdrop on scanners catches this tidbit
By Lauren Mayme and all of my selves
we run like we’ve been here before
like we know what’s waiting here
and it's nothing
nothing for us
anyway
