Photo: Evie Shaffer / Unsplash A Funeral Wash me with warm water and soap made of fresh olive oil anoint me with amber and camphor water with rose geranium and orange blossom water Swaddl…

Illustration: JR Korpa / Unsplash Sometimes i’m called an “activist-poet,” maybe to make my aesthetically odd poetry seem more relevant or marketable to audiences other than…

Photo: Michael Day / Flickr July 10, 1040: Lady Godiva, wife of the Earl of Mercia, rides naked on horseback to force her husband to lower taxes. July 10, 2015: Sandra Blan…

Photo: Faungg / Flickr It’s hot in the loading bridge,  hot in the birth canal, it’s hot in the striped boy’s heart – we’re two women driving to D.C. for an abortion  in my beat…

You Will Grow Together in Your Rage, illustration by Meg Lionel Murphy “You’re the One,” by Fanny (1971) Hell yeah, let this Brown Girl sing because I know what I k…

Saad Merie / DeviantArt to Rima Dali, with love Rima Dali in her red raincoat reaches downtown Damascus, silently steps into the intersection stands tall as traffic holds high a…

Miktlanziwatl (Lady of Death) © Cara Romero. All Rights Reserved. Abyayala Full of Questions América, I don’t invoke your name. When I bare my heart to the swo…

Photo: Analusie Gamboa / Unsplash There were neither plots nor characters, only places. Neighborhoods sliced in half. Terraces and corridors between roofless rooms. Profiles only.  S…

The Weapon is Sharing (This Machine Kills Fascists), by Cannupa Hanska Luger, ceramic, 2017. Photo courtesy of the artist. The Zoque and Spanish originals of this poem appear …

Photo: Hulleah Tsinhnahjinnie after Ferlinghetti Pity the nation whose freedom melts faster than Arctic ice Whose justice defends sex predators & puts children in jail. Pity…

Photo: Centrifuga / Flickr after a photograph by Sally Mann and Detention Center Concentration Camps      

The endangered Serianthes nelsonii sapling on Andersen Air Force Base, Guam. More than forty of the endangered tree species saplings were planted around Andersen by biologists from the U…

Photos: “Skedee” and “Cherokee National Holiday — Tahlequah,” from In The Territories, by Shane Brown  American Indians should stop weeping over      the cruelty of the…

Photo: Lucas Poisson / Flickr​​ Leave. No two ways about it, they leave heading out toward night.                          …

Illustration: Dustin Mater March 1973   Forever. Always. Never-ending. Continuing. It was snowing in the Southwest, and the wind was cold and harsh the past few days.…

Winter Sun, 2017, oil on wood panel, by Kay WalkingStick. Courtesy of the artist and June Kelly Gallery Bless this land from the top of its head to the bottom of its feet  …

They had to remove it and off we went: A transparent image of bones chained together; Half face, three-quarters, full face of the fingers stretched out,      fingers without recogn…

Fin whales in the Svalbard archipelago / Photo by Guillaume Baviere / Flickr “52” is the moniker given to an unidentified whale (most likely a blue or fin) whose high-pitched voc…

Temple in Varanasi / Photo by Saurabh Chatterjee / Flickr Spring descends on this city suddenly and when it does a whirl of dust rises from Lehartara or Manduadih and coats the tongue o…

Photo: Courtesy of the Author  As she pleases  after Tropical Storm Ondoy, 2009  If only words dilute sediments at the bottom of my gut; if only a tongue can let thi…

There was a time, a certain weather where the butterflies danced paused on the grass to rest and hear the song of the wind echo. There was a time, an ardent weather when the sun shone more st…

The Aquarium, 20" x 24" hand-painted paper collage on wood panel, private collection. © Elizabeth St. Hilaire (paperpaintings.com) Three Pebbles Si…

  Farol de Combate  This is how, while darkness  drew my profile with its little finger  I have learned to see past as Montale saw it,  The obscure t…

Photo: Picker H/Flickr  November in Xichang  There are cities one won’t see again. – Joseph Brodsky   I. Only a bearded smile shows below a conica…

Photo: Brian Ainsworth/Flickr Borderland (2) Moored in an estuary of chestnut trees is the main building – a mother ship. The sharp-eyed gaze eventually settles, studying…