Calling poets to a greater role in public life and fostering a national network of socially engaged poets.
By George Abrahammaybe if , ash & smolder way the – tongue own my in never but song this heard i've
– it birthed who fire the not & gospel become can , mouth right the in seen
By Leticia Hernández-LinaresTus pómulos, the historic shape of your
temporal bones imitating the pirámides we carry, beating
blueprints inside of our lungs, stencil the heart
with the angles of the architecture we were born in.
By Kimberly BlaeserBeginning with our continent, draw 1491:
each mountain, compass point Indigenous;
trace trade routes, languages, seasonal migrations—
don’t become attached.
By Carmin WongStart with something simple: 13 loosely lingering light-hearted lines that eventually morph / into crowbars ★ corps ★ prison cells ★ bylines.
By Kyle DarganThis poem is guilty. It assumed it retained
the right to ask its question after the page
came up flush against its face.
By Trevino L. Brings PlentyArms, face, scrotum – dark brown.
The kind of brown to drive
monsters to exterminate
bison to starve
a people.
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By Tarik DobbsChorus: Like a bridge over troubled water…
For years, settlers longingly, vertical, build over us, Starbucks has no sinks. Will we go? Lately, the bridge, their throne. When even these are somewhere to watch from, to drop a knee & propose somewhere to feel for a bank.
By Cyrée Jarelle JohnsonBlack excitement is danger. We have seen the other side of optimism for so long. Feels like fiction. Put your feet up on that dashboard because here comes the F U T U R E! Wow! Chewbacca was the blackest part of "The Force Awakens."
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By Darius Simpsondangerously good at freeze tag, like ghost good
drenched in red puddles, but on his way
down by the gutter river
By A. Tony JeromeStanding in line, waiting to go into the Library of Congress
a black woman stands two people ahead of me and
a white security guard says to her,
It’s a beautiful day.