Photo: Evie Shaffer / Unsplash
An Offering
O Leaves, O Flowers!
We hold you in our hands as offerings.
We stir in you the ruin of winter,
the swell of summer.
Say a little something,
when we tr…
Poetry
Illustration by Elyas Alavi from the series Waking Dreams Translator’s note: Few voices are more distinctive in the world of contemporary Afghan poetry than Elyas Alavi. The dynamic…
Photo by Alexander Krivitskiy/Unsplash the human soul is a dark place, leviathan. so much that my eyes begrudge the light. I sense the dark upsurge. I can’t find a hole large enough, can’t live on le…
Ruth Loveland, Inferno, 36x36 inches, mixed media on wood, 2017 is the last thing I want you to become as in late in life your lover looks at a picture of the day you met a sudden warmt…
Taha Khalil, Untitled, acrylic on canvas Scapegoat And the knife is in your hand You look just like Abraham, our prophet I’m your old, old Ishmael. Captivity Late at night As if I’m a w…
Kristin Marie Enns-Kavanagh / Flickr Agnes Martin, Eye Hill Rural Municipality No. 382, Saskatchewan The land moves without qualm in billows and degrees of bored…
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 Swaddle me with…
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 Bland was pulled o…
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 beater sea-green Le Ma…
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 know and I…
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 red bann…
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 sword, When…
Photo: Analusie Gamboa / Unsplash There were neither plots nor characters, only places. Neighborhoods sliced in half. Terraces and corridors between roofless rooms. Profiles only. Staggered spa…
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 in Mikeas Sánc…
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 the nati…
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 Unive…
Photos: “Skedee” and “Cherokee National Holiday — Tahlequah,” from In The Territories, by Shane Brown American Indians should stop weeping over the cruelty of the trail of tears and the long…
Photo: Lucas Poisson / Flickr Leave. No two ways about it, they leave heading out toward night. Desperate, a coastal patrol will look for them, g…
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. We know be…
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 From the…
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 recognizable lines, i…
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 vocalizatio…
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 of this a…
