Calling poets to a greater role in public life and fostering a national network of socially engaged poets.
By Gowri Koneswaran★ While planning your journey, accept that ethics are not included in the price of your ticket;
★ Tell yourself your currency is helping the country;
★ Do not question government control of the tourism industry;
By Luis Alberto AmbroggioPoetry might never have seen
that categorical word,
but in its charged belligerence
of emotions and in its profound determination,
By Clint SmithThere is a lake here.
A lake the size of
outstretched arms. And no,
not the type of arms raised
By Holly KarapetkovaThere never was a garden
only a leaving:
miles and miles
of footprints in the dirt.
By Taylor JohnsonBless the boys riding their bikes straight up, at midnight, touching,
if only briefly, holding, hands as they cross the light to Independence.
Bless them for from the side the one on the red bike looks like me
his redbrown hair loose against the late summer static heat.
By Allison Pitinii DavisBefore him, stickers fade across the bumper:
LAST ONE OUT OF TOWN, TURN OFF THE LIGHTS.
The last employer in Youngstown is the weather:
the truck behind him plows grey snow to the roadside
By Marcos L. MartínezThere are immeasurable ways to count days: on the median the sunflower tracks UV streams: east to west then sleep; an acorn gets weeded out of the common area ‘til another live oak drobs a bomb then sprouts till, yanked away again;
By Heather Derr-SmithThe fish are opened up like salad bowls,
Slid between the metal bars of baskets,
Roasted in the wood-fired ovens, Iraqi style.
The flesh glows as if it were made of glass.
By Marci Calabretta Cancio-BelloI fell in love with a North Korean
by falling asleep on his shoulder
in a South Korean subway.
By Rasheed CopelandWe learned
from the book
of our fathers’ silence