Aubade with Gravel and Gold
By Sally Wen MaoI’m sick of speaking for women who’ve died
Their stories and their disappearances
bludgeon me in my sleep
Calling poets to a greater role in public life and fostering a national network of socially engaged poets.
By Sally Wen MaoI’m sick of speaking for women who’ve died
Their stories and their disappearances
bludgeon me in my sleep
By Sarah BrowningAfter the great snow of 2016, my car sits
locked in icy drifts a week, green fossil
of the oil age preserved in graying amber.
By Remica Bingham-RisherI am almost convinced this morning by the volley
of verses on each frequency, roughnecks telling it
like they want it to be, intoning You bad, baby
By Keno Evolthe night i was to meet my brother for the first time in 23 years he ain’t show / absence is not what comes up from that memory / more it was the dusk in September / how fog can hide a growl
By Jen Hoferwhat dateless body what we exacted or nixed or hexed in the eternal present of not being able to – what not being able to not be considered garbage or trashed by the bag
By Clint SmithThere is a lake here.
A lake the size of
outstretched arms. And no,
not the type of arms raised
By Taylor JohnsonBless the boys riding their bikes straight up, at midnight, touching,
if only briefly, holding, hands as they cross the light to Independence.
Bless them for from the side the one on the red bike looks like me
his redbrown hair loose against the late summer static heat.
By Allison Pitinii DavisBefore him, stickers fade across the bumper:
LAST ONE OUT OF TOWN, TURN OFF THE LIGHTS.
The last employer in Youngstown is the weather:
the truck behind him plows grey snow to the roadside
By Marcos L. MartínezThere are immeasurable ways to count days: on the median the sunflower tracks UV streams: east to west then sleep; an acorn gets weeded out of the common area ‘til another live oak drobs a bomb then sprouts till, yanked away again;