Leaving My Childhood Home
By Zeina AzzamOn our last day in Beirut
with my ten years packed in a suitcase,
my best friend asked for a keepsake.
I found a little tin box
Calling poets to a greater role in public life and fostering a national network of socially engaged poets.
By Zeina AzzamOn our last day in Beirut
with my ten years packed in a suitcase,
my best friend asked for a keepsake.
I found a little tin box
By Fatimah Asgharam I not your baby?
brown & not allowed
my own language?
my teeth pulled
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 Rachel Eliza GriffithsI pick you up
& you are a child made of longing
clasped to my neck. Iridescent,
lovely, your inestimable tantrums,
By Hari Allurithe tea in her glass. It glows the brocade.
Her grandmother picked that tea
on a mountain—a mountain in a war
whose shores were her bed. Steeping, the petals
By Susanna LangShe had planned to offer peaches with the tea.
August was warm; the fruit had ripened to perfection.
She’d placed two paring knives on the cutting board,
set out the teapot with nasturtiums painted on the side.
By Kazumi ChinThe very last mammoth was just like the others,
except more lonely. The very last tortilla chip
makes me feel guilty.The very last line
of the poem changes everything about
By Naomi AyalaNaomi Ayala performs the poem "Within Me" at the 2008 Split This Rock Poetry Festival.
By Andrea GibsonAndrea Gibson performs the poem "For Eli" at the 2010 Split This Rock Poetry Festival.
By Martín EspadaMartín Espada performs the poem "Alabanza" at the 2010 Split This Rock Poetry Festival.