Zyklon B
By Julie EnszerThe painters call before we move into the new house. Ma’am, they say—
I am not old enough to be a ma’am, but I don’t correct them—
Ma’am, they say, we smell gas.
I dismiss their concern. I say, Keep painting.
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Letter From the Water at Guantanamo Bay
By Sara BrickmanThey do not want me to be a river, but I am unstoppable.
I am the perfect instrument. Capable
of every sound, but here the only sound you hear under
me is No. Is, Please. The men
Elegy
By Rachel Eliza GriffithsI remember the boys & their open hands. High fives
of farewell. I remember that the birches waved too,
the white jagged limbs turning away from incessant wildfires
Hikmet: Çankiri Prison, 1938
By Joshua WeinerToday is Sunday.
Today, for the first time, they let me go out into the sun.
And I stood there I didn't move,
struck for the first time, the very first time ever:
bitter crop
By Kelli Stevens Kaneblueberry blackberry as always
bleeding, back road or boulevard,
our boy crowned with baton,
First Morning Poem
By Allison Adelle Hedge CokeIn a room facing chimneys
over the place Nancy Morejón rests
between sleeps lining free lines
she whispers to hearing DC:
Past Tense
By Sam TaylorAnd someone in a field found an old car
from the year black with beetles, eaten like lace,
and the sky fell into it, a private thing.
And everyone had a kitchen or a fold-out bed
2008, XII
By Wendell BerryWe forget the land we stand on
and live from. We set ourselves
free in an economy founded
on nothing, on greed verified
not an elegy for Mike Brown
By Danez SmithI am sick of writing this poem
but bring the boy. his new name
his same old body. ordinary, black
dead thing. bring him & we will mourn