Calling poets to a greater role in public life and fostering a national network of socially engaged poets.
By Nicholas SamarasWhat is that red throbbing over the sound of engines?
Why is a distant war still being talked about in the media?
I can't see my home or Iraq or the Middle East
outside this bowed rectangle of blue altitude.
By Elizabeth AcevedoRob, my heart is a peeled clementine and I don't wince
anymore when you stick your thumb in the hollow middle,
pull apart. You don't even swallow these pieces
By Reginald HarrisGet off here. This is a story you've
been told: these streets before the trash,
the rats, the crack-heads nodding to ghost
By Lisa L. MooreWord got out about the bad bill.
College students packed up their bikinis,
went back to Austin to tell those men why
By Melissa TuckeyA roadside bomb is planted in every chest
I was a pea sized fist in the dirt of a man
who had half your brains
By Patricia MonaghanJust past dawn in early fall,
a sparrow screamed at me
as I walked into the woods.
By Rachel M. Simonthe name altered from parent's choosing
the threshold of a home
white gloves on the windowsill
By DaMaris B. HillI dream of hounds. Their teeth loose in my veins.
Their howls consume me. They growl and feast.
She whispers not to run. I can't refrain.
By Sheila BlackThe brace was metal, and it fastened around the ankles.
Outside in the street there was the beggar with elephantiasis; there was
the leper, the neighbor with eyes milky blind,
By Camille T. DungyThe poet's hands degenerate until her cup is too heavy.
You are not required to understand.
This is not the year for understanding.