Calling poets to a greater role in public life and fostering a national network of socially engaged poets.
By Abby Minor1. [July 2013 Millheim, Pennsylvania]
This is how you miscarry on purpose, with pills:
this is how you eat a sack of tattered peonies.
With stippled petals in your mouth, this is how
you set the little sunset-
By Anna Maria Hongout of this world & out of time & out
of love & out of mind & out of the
pan & out of butter, out of anger
& out of mother, out of the cradle
By Zeina AzzamOn our last day in Beirut
with my ten years packed in a suitcase,
my best friend asked for a keepsake.
I found a little tin box
By Geffrey DavisDuring the last 50 miles back from haul & some
months past my 15th birthday, my father fishes
a stuffed polar bear from a Salvation Army
gift-bin, labeled Boys: 6-10. I can almost see him
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 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.
By Vincent ToroA lung lit like diesel
is not fable or fodder.
Is not sewage siphoned from stern
and starboard. Cuffs, not slapdash plums
plunge from your garden
By Kathi WolfeIn an elevator trapped
between the fifteenth and sixteenth
floor of her apartment building,
Sunday morning, Elizabeth, her cane
By Carlos Andrés GómezCarlos Andrés Gómez performs the poem " 'Juan Valdez' (or 'Why is a white guy like you named 'Carlos'?')" at the 2012 Split This Rock Poetry Festival.