Calling poets to a greater role in public life and fostering a national network of socially engaged poets.
By Denise BergmanShe is a neighbor a building away, we talk weather and potholes, exchange
names Mary same as her daughter or is she Marissa or Maria I was distracted
her nephew was chewing the leg of his doll and the day was disappearing before
By Richard BlancoAll of us as vital as the one light we move through,
the same light on blackboards with lessons for the day:
equations to solve, history to question, or atoms imagined,
By Jacob RakovanThe bones cast in the field like seed corn grow nothing,
grow briars in the boarded gas stations
brown stalks ready for the fire.
By Richard BlancoThe Gulf Motel with mermaid lampposts
and ship's wheel in the lobby should still be
rising out of the sand like a cake decoration.
By Brian FanelliEvery Sunday, I came dressed in punk rocker black,
checkered pants, steel-toed Docs.
No tie dye on me when I joined
By Rachel M. Simonthe name altered from parent's choosing
the threshold of a home
white gloves on the windowsill
By Kamilah Aisha MoonHuge dashes in the sand, two or three
times a year they swim like words
in a sentence toward the period
By María Luisa ArroyoMami called us away from the roach trap line
where novice factory workers, fresh from the island,
and I, fresh from Germany, poked
By Cathy Linh CheI see my mother at thirteen
in a village so small,
it's never given a name.
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.