Calling poets to a greater role in public life and fostering a national network of socially engaged poets.
By Rosemary FerreiraHabichuelas bubbling on the stovetop. The kitchen door opens to our backyard. My father cuts out a piece of the campo and plants it here in Brooklyn. There are neighbors who knock on the door with a broom to let us know they’re selling pasteles. The train rumbles into a screech in the background, “This is Gates Avenue, the next stop is...”
By Amy M. AlvarezI keep thinking about Breonna Taylor asleep/ between fresh sheets/ I keeping thinking/ about her skin cooling after a shower/ about her hair wrapped in a satin bonnet/ I think about what she may have dreamed that night
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 Maricielo Ampudia GutiérrezWith each finger, I pressed on black ink, and one by one placed them on the transmitting screen. Following instruction, I rolled each finger, left to right, and slow—every quarter inch of skin recorded. On the display, perfect fingerprints glowing.
By Azia ArmsteadWe wait for the show to begin in an open field on a blazing summer night.
Fireworks are most lucent in the blackness of a sky with no sun which
makes me think of blackness as a metaphor, how colors shine brightest
when contrasted against it.
By Daria-Ann MartineauI find myself noticing you again
eight years later,
you coming out of the earth, pale,
erect, shadow over men.
You can’t be buried.
By Claudia Rojas(We) DMV centers will see and take less of us.
We
(are) We will not miss a day of work or school
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.
By Emmy PérezIn 1930, my tatarabuela still spoke Rarámuri.
Detribalized now as we’ve been from Turtle Island,
south and north of the río grande, west and east
it’s no surprise that we’re still writing about
our identities, brown women regarded
as brown women, they’d say equally as if
a consolation for any.