Calling poets to a greater role in public life and fostering a national network of socially engaged poets.
By Azia ArmsteadWe wait for the show to begin in an open field on a blazing summer night.
Fireworks are most lucent in the blackness of a sky with no sun which
makes me think of blackness as a metaphor, how colors shine brightest
when contrasted against it.
By Daria-Ann MartineauI find myself noticing you again
eight years later,
you coming out of the earth, pale,
erect, shadow over men.
You can’t be buried.
By Safia Elhilloi sat by the lake & ate five tiny oranges & every strand
of flesh & pith was my teacher
i grew warm & soft in the sun & from this ripening
made a poem to search for my teacher
By Natalie WeeI was born in 1993, the year Regie Cabico became the first
Asian American to win the Nuyorican Poets Cafe Grand Slam.
By Azura TyabjiIf the meaning of the prayer was not passed down to you,
find it through holier means than translation.
Cling to the rhythm instead.
By Maren Lovey Wright-Kerrwhen the makeup aisle stops at “caramel”
it means
the makeup industry just thinks you already too pretty to need they products
By Kimberly BlaeserYes, it’s true I speak ill of the living
in coded ways divorced from the dead.
Why Lyla June fasts on capitol steps.
By Kyle Dargan“Man-law” I first violate at age ten—
my wandering fingers not appeased by picking
through my cousin’s video
game cartridges, Sports Illustrateds.
By M. Soledad CaballeroThe Cherokee are not originally from Oklahoma. Settlers forced
them to disappear west, into air and sky, beyond buildings,
beyond concrete, beyond the rabid land hunger. There was
a trail. There was despair. Reservations carved out of prairie
grass, lost space and sadness in the middle of flat dirt.
By Trevino L. Brings PlentyTo acknowledge so-
cietal micro-systems
as a poet means I
will continue to be
emerging within an on-
slaught of the macro-
system submergence
operations.