You Handed Me a Loaded Gun
“The cans with exit wounds // made of summer and twisted aluminum. Sky the color of aluminum, / bright body ready to tread its knots.”
Triolet in E-Flat Major
“The topology of your hands / maps your mother’s wounds, withstands / the force against cheeks, flushed.”
Hypotenuse
By Len Lawson
“The eyes of injustice strike deep as a bullet. The eyes of a revolutionary strike deeper through eternity.”
A
“A is antecedent, anterior, the abscess from which all else / arises. The atrocity in the attic, but also the attic’s architecture.”
Featured Poetry
We are so grateful to all of our partner-poets for sharing their work with us—please enjoy their beautiful words in our Featured Poetry catalogue.
The Gallery of America
By Katie Hale
“There was ugliness, too, in the gallery, though the audioguide / steered me meticulously away.”
Year of the Gilded Pig
By April Lim
“Hands pulsing, demands I eat / myself golden, the gentlest curves of mango, / she still carves me.”
Knee Length #5
By Khalisa Rae
In Knee-Length, poet and journalist Khalisa Rae navigates the nuances of an inherited conservative legacy. Pulling from memories of her religious upbringing and education, family history, and matrilineal teachings, Knee Length is a history reimagined and excavated—a rebellious relearning of desire and respectability, family and faith.