america
By Fatimah Asgharam I not your baby?
brown & not allowed
my own language?
my teeth pulled
Calling poets to a greater role in public life and fostering a national network of socially engaged poets.
By Fatimah Asgharam I not your baby?
brown & not allowed
my own language?
my teeth pulled
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 Katy Richeymust be tight
spiral wound
corset of rope
be body and
undertaker be
By Jan BeattyI see you’re publishing:
straightman/straightman/white white white how
nice.
Are you kidding me?
By Dominique ChristinaWhen the sun is pitiless
When the girl is a gust of get out fast
When the boys are forced to mingle with the forest
When the baby, still nursing leaves her mother
By E. Ethelbert MillerIf I was tree green instead of black
they would come and cut my branches,
destroy my roots, transport my
life and turn me into paper pulp.
By Tanya OlsonWhat else should I want. But to
be a boy. A boy. At his mother’s hip.
A boy between. His father
and the plow. A boy to remain.
What else.
By Martha Collinsstock strain family line
breed blood skin shape
of the head of the pack
By Craig Santos Perezkaikainaliʻi wakes from her late afternoon nap
and reaches for nālani with small open hands—
count how many papuan children
still reach for their disappeared parents—
By Reginald Dwayne BettsA woman tattoos Malik’s name above
her breast & talks about the conspiracy
to destroy blacks. This is all a fancy way
to say that someone kirked out, emptied