Calling poets to a greater role in public life and fostering a national network of socially engaged poets.
By Demetrice Anntía WorleyOn this eve of the dead, I cry out loud,
“por favor Virgen de Guadalupe, don’t
forsake me,” before I open the door,
before I see la policía flat
By Saeed JonesAll throat now already brighter than the stars.
I could hold you in my song. Sotto voce, tremble
against me: a breeze slips in, cools my blood
By Persis M. KarimTake their limbs strewn about the streets—
multiply by a thousand and one.
Ask everyone in Baghdad who has lost
By Najwan DarwishFado, I’ll sleep like people do
when shells are falling
and the sky is torn like living flesh
I’ll dream, then, like people do
By Don ShareJuly kindles the redneck in me.
I blaze down Interstates
that are viaducts for my beery nerves
By Nicholas SamarasWhat is that red throbbing over the sound of engines?
Why is a distant war still being talked about in the media?
I can't see my home or Iraq or the Middle East
outside this bowed rectangle of blue altitude.
By Gretchen Primackand there was a dog, precisely the colors of autumn,
asleep between two trunks by the trail.
But it was a coyote, paws pink