Calling poets to a greater role in public life and fostering a national network of socially engaged poets.
By Destiny O. BirdsongOr maybe you weren’t. Whenever I’m frightened,
anything can become a black woman in a granite dress:
scaffold for what’s to come: blue lights exploding
like an aurora at the base of the bridge;
By JP Howardblack women we be trying to hold worlds
on our backs, in our hearts without fail
some days we fail at perfection
By Purvi ShahYou had a name no one
could hold between their
teeth. So they pronounced
By Samantha ThornhillGive thanks to your mansion
of a mama in that cold square room
the push and pull
of breath that brought
By Luis Alberto AmbroggioPoetry might never have seen
that categorical word,
but in its charged belligerence
of emotions and in its profound determination,
By Holly KarapetkovaThere never was a garden
only a leaving:
miles and miles
of footprints in the dirt.
By Patrick RosalA brisk sunset walk home: Lafayette Ave.
After weeks straight of triple layers
and double gloves, the day has inched
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 Leslie Anne Mcilroy(1) to form by heating and hammering; beat into shape, as in the child’s back
burning, shoulders of flame, ribs of shame till she is no longer what she
was, but what you want her to be; 2) to form or make, especially by
concentrated effort, as in pride, see the girl, my girl, take credit, look what I