Broken
By Lillian AllenThe boy is broken on the sidewalk
The sidewalk is broken beneath him
His colour is back (not black)
Search Results
A Theory of Violence
By Jennifer PerrineUnder the surface of this winter lake,
I can still hear him say you're on thin ice
now, my heel grabbed, dragged into the opaque
Character Anatomy
By Amaranth BorsukFew things the hand wished language could
do, given up on dialect's downward spiral:
words so readily betray things they're meant
from One Today
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,
Elegy for Kimani Gray
By Kenji LiuSharp tenure of boots in this callow country
grown from open skulls. A raw harvest of bullet casings
arranged in a perfect ring around you,
Loaded
By Patricia MonaghanThey were always taught that all guns were loaded.
It was a way, he said, to keep them safe.
Don't you notice, he said, how people get shot
Hilt’s Law
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.
Hold
By Gowri Koneswaranwe're taught to hold hands
when we cross the street
or walk with our mothers in parking lots or
Political Soundtrack
By Brian FanelliEvery Sunday, I came dressed in punk rocker black,
checkered pants, steel-toed Docs.
No tie dye on me when I joined
Prayer at Plymouth Church
By Margaret RozgaLet there be drums and harps,
piccolos and flutes, violins,
banjos and guitars.