Our society is increasingly global, and the era of Covid-19 is no different. We may forget our localities and the importance of community in consuming the news and internet media. One city, the domain…

Photo by Oluwaseyi Johnson / Unsplash I was lucky to meet Romalyn Ante when I was invited to read at a virtual event organized by R. A. Villanueva and hosted by Books Are Magic in August 2020. Ante w…

On the Yangtze River, through the Wu Gorge / Photo by Perfect Zero / Flickr Summer Elegy                         for my father From June to June, as though uninterrupted, I…

Juan Felipe Herrera / © UC Riverside / Courtesy of Blue Flower Arts For the 44th Annual Writers Week, the University of California, Riverside department of Creative Writing, in…

Photo by Russ Morris / Flickr Some may live just a block away, even nearer: the Walmart clerk who’d coolly hook a hot wire to your gonads, the grease monkey keen on beheading, the cleaning lady…

The seacoast at Mykonos / Photo by the author In Andros, I Watch a Goat Run to and away from My Father’s Hands He opens his eyes. His eyes                   the color of its gray co…

Photo by Jes Timms / Unsplash for Vishnu Khare How to convey one’s well-being over the phone, It’s going all right, All that is there is good or nothing is good. The main thing to say is,…

Photo by Matt Artz / Unsplash I write with words that have shadow but don’t shelter no sooner do I start this page insomnia burns it not the words but what they consume is what reality starts occup…

Photo by Patrick Robert Doyle / Unsplash Four Scars for a Nameless Town 1 I come from a town with no name, no smiles of children under the trees. My town has no p…

Detail of Robert Aitken’s Samuel Gompers Memorial, 1933, Washington, DC / Photo by takomabibelot / Flickr What book he was reading – we still don’t know, For Shakespeare doesn’t tell us. Just that…

Käthe Kollwitz, Pietà (Mother with Dead Son), 1937 (enlarged by Harald Haake in 1993), Neue Wache, Unter den Linden, Berlin / Photo by deadmanjones / Flickr / Original sculpture in the Käthe…

Photo by Dave Phillips / Unsplash We heard the trucks pull up, the barking voices, a woman in the street –Irina? – putting up a fight. Each night, the bell’s insistent buzz, the foot-stomps on the…

Photo by Nebojsa Mladjenovic / Flickr Series editor’s note: In Chris Abani’s poem “Ritual Is Journey,” the black man has been laid bare on the page, his histories refocused, and though he or…

Detail from a photograph of the author’s great-great-grandmother and a photograph of her mother, age eleven. Image courtesy of the author Series editor’s note: In Aracelis Girmay’s new poem,…

Beginning October 7, the Catamaran Center for the Literary Arts will offer a Zoom class called Around the World with Six Poets. The following interview with the…

Nina Simone Sings the Blues (RCA Victor, 1967) Series editor’s note: In Jamaica Baldwin’s “Windfall,” the self is buried beneath layers and layers of internalized memories, becoming…

Sheep’s Head Lighthouse / Photo by John Finn / Flickr Author’s note: For about seven years now, Kwame Dawes and I have been writing long poem-dialogues that have so far appeared as four book…

“Girl and a Margin” Image: Ladan Osman. Collage: Joe Penney. Series editor’s note: In Ladan Osman’s piece “Dark Matter Girls,” the poet quietly asks herself, and by extension us, how we see…

Photo by Daniel McCullough / Unsplash Series editor’s note: What happens in the aftermath of a long, ravaging war? What happens to folks whose country is always at war with them? These are t…

Photo by Mitchell Luo / Unsplash Series editor’s note: In Saddiq Dzukogi’s new poem, the speaker observes as a snake shows up unannounced, unsummoned, and sluggishly inserts its head into a…

Photo by Dustin Humes on Unsplash Series editor’s note: I’ve always thought of poetry as a sacred ground to think and write about things we wouldn’t normally do. And in the case of Safia Elh…

"Abstract Yellow Cliffs," Acrylics, 73x50cm by Kazuya Akimoto. Used with permission from the artist. Series editor’s note: In Matthew Shenoda’s new poem, “Seeing,” the writer turns to poetry…

Photo by Richard Lee / Unsplash [A flock of cranes] A flock of cranes crosses an ashen sky             the prophet is first to rise black lines cleave through the black air     …

Photo by John Fisher Manoomin. It is the first Ojibwe word I will learn. It means wild rice, or “food that grows on water.” The sound of it is fitting. Less sibilant than rice. A wa…

Photo courtesy of the author for Rachelle 4/27/2020 Our moms were widows before they met our fathers. Their hair blue-black, their hands already chapped, caressed by Inglis die-cast toolin…