Kim Stafford: Poems for a Cause
Maybe we’re past hints and whispers,
our chance gone for subtle scents
and fugitive flavors—time for coffee
black, jolt of onion, garlic unadorned.
Michael Simms: Prospero needs a little nap
Vox Populi will endure, albeit at a slower pace.
Jennifer Franklin: As Antigone
I will not walk away.
The moment the nurse
pressed your splotched
body into my arms,
your needs fixed my fate.
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer: When She Was Afraid She Wasn’t Good Enough
When fear scuttled through her thoughts
with its eight slender legs; when she recognized
the shiny black body, the bulbous abdomen
Michael Simms: Hatred
I scythed, mowed, axed
hoed, trimmed, yanked
and eyed with vicious intent
this intruder eating my garden.
But the satanic bramble would not die.
Video: Suheir Hammad | Poems of war, peace, women, power
Poet Suheir Hammad performs two spine-tingling spoken-word pieces: Wait for the astonishing line: “Do not fear what has blown up. If you must, fear the unexploded.”
James Crews: I Keep the Window Open
Life’s too fragile
to waste on money or importance,
handing over the hours that will never
be returned to us.
Laure-Anne Bosselaar: Tonight’s Dinner Companions
you, old poet, gone, whose lines I often
say aloud against the ocean’s constant shush
David Kirby: More Than This
you three must be thirsty,
come in and get a drink, and the cowboy says okay,
but what is this place, and the guy says it’s heaven
Barbara Hamby: O Deceitful Tongue
Drunk tongue, warling,
malt-mad forger in the bone orchard, give me
your traitor’s code, so I can whistle my psalm
through the sinworm night.
Seamus Heaney: Personal Helicon
As a child, they could not keep me from wells
And old pumps with buckets and windlasses.
I loved the dark drop, the trapped sky, the smells
Of waterweed, fungus and dank moss.
Cynthia Atkins: Hairbrush
He’d fall asleep on my chest, breath light as a falling leaf.
Now, he glides the bristles down my neck— He gently fluffs
the tufts, like airing the pillows.
Valerie Bacharach: Chaos
There is no word for parents who have lost a child. Our language is chaotic. We are not widowed or orphaned. We are without, we are incomplete.
Patricia Nugent: It Feels Bad
It feels bad that we are the only industrialized nation that doesn’t have women’s equality built into its constitution.
