Calling poets to a greater role in public life and fostering a national network of socially engaged poets.
By Catherine KlatzkerThe world was always a place of silence,
of congenital shame—even before those days
in 1967, four years before you met your love. Your
strength grew belatedly, fertilized as it was in the
knowledge that you were nothing. Your life did
not matter to anyone, except to hurt you.
By Dunya MikhailIn Iraq,
after a thousand and one nights,
someone will talk to someone else.
Markets will open
for regular customers.
By Amal Al-Jubouri—My solitude, to which I always returned
City that kept my secret religion in her libraries
I came back to rest my head on her shoulder
and with just one look, she saw how tired I was
By Elexia AlleyneMaybe it’s the Spanish running through my veins
That’s the only way I know how to explain it
Maybe it’s the r’s rrrolling off my tongue
See,
By Caits MeissnerI am 13 hours in the future & it is night / the rain is holding her breath
my friend, isn’t Penang opening to us! / a lotus unveiling a carnival
the paper lanterns are skirts / or balls pushed along by tiger’s nose
our smoke is a canon / dare devil on its way to an unnamed star
By Heidi Andrea Restrepo RhodesWake. Wake.
These the nights we sing. These the folds,
unborn reverie, ambition marbled mud & shine,
raging anthem born like diamonds out darkest ash & rain
By Aracelis GirmayBeloved, to
day you eat,
today you bathe, today
you laugh
By Jan BeattyI see you’re publishing:
straightman/straightman/white white white how
nice.
Are you kidding me?
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
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