Not songs of loyalty alone are these, But songs of insurrection also, For I am the sworn poet of every dauntless rebel the world over. —Walt Whitman I see the dark-skinned bodies falling in the street as their ancestors fell before the whip and steel, the last blood...

The city’s streets are densely shelved with rows of salt and packaged hair. Intent on air, the funk of crave and function comes to blows with any smell that isn’t oil—the blare of storefront chicken settles on the skin and mango spritzing drips from razored hair. The...

Whose broken window is a cry of art (success, that winks aware as elegance, as a treasonable faith) is raw: is sonic: is old-eyed première. Our beautiful flaw and terrible ornament. Our barbarous and metal little man. “I shall create! If not a note, a hole. If not an...

I begin with love, hoping to end there. I don’t want to leave a messy corpse.          I don’t want to leave a messy corpse        Full of medicines that turn in the sun.   Some of my medicines turn in the sun. Some of us don’t need hell to be good.    ...

In the worst hour of the worst season of the worst year of a whole people a man set out from the workhouse with his wife. He was walking—they were both walking—north. She was sick with famine fever and could not keep up. He lifted her and put her on his back. He...

I have known only my own shallows— Safe, plumbed places, Where I was wont to preen myself. But for the abyss I wanted a plank beneath And horizons... I was afraid of the silence And the slipping toe-hold... Oh, could I now dive Into the unexplored deeps of me— Delve...

We have memorized America, how it was born and who we have been and where. In ceremonies and silence we say the words, telling the stories, singing the old songs. We like the places they take us. Mostly we do. The great and all the anonymous dead are there. We know...

Thirteenth amendment couldn’t protect us from the war on drugs, after our leaders were jailed or shot our country pressed its fingers up against our spine but you should know we still want a new flag: Brave Like Martin Bronze Lit Movement Beautiful Like Malcolm...

When Laurens van der Post one night In the Kalahari Desert told the Bushmen He couldn't hear the stars Singing, they didn't believe him. They looked at him, half-smiling. They examined his face To see whether he was joking Or deceiving them. Then two of those small...

It is said that before entering the sea a river trembles with fear. She looks back at the path she has traveled, from the peaks of the mountains, the long winding road crossing forests and villages. And in front of her, she sees an ocean so vast, that to enter there...