Section

Poetry

New poems, sequences, and translations. Work that attends to form as a political and ethical question.

Beauty contemporary

Michael Boughn

Beauty is taken apart—nail, tea bowl, iris, ditch, and a dog named Case—and found still living in the flaw, the maggot, and the knock at the door.

  • poetry
  • contemporary
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Cosmic Looping contemporary

Scott C. Holstad

The dreams of youth, the lists of fairness and justice, stand beside thunder, leaves, animals, and children. Through every turn the poem keeps one instruction: never believe, never trust, but never give up or give in.

  • poetry
  • contemporary
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Island Confessions contemporary

Mark Stein

Three poems: Angel, Beaver, and Ni’ihau expose the island as an ideological machine where colonial violence, exclusion, and dispossession are transformed into myth, mystery, and picturesque lore. What looks like geography becomes a technology of power, revealing how history is buried beneath the stories we tell about place.

  • poetry
  • contemporary
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America earlier voice

Claude McKay

A sonnet of bitter love for America — strength against hate, and wonders sinking in the sand of time.

  • poetry
  • america
  • sonnet
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Sons of Belial earlier voice

Lola Ridge

Written in 1920. A poem of the mob across history — from Gilead to Alexandria, from Rosa Luxemburg to Missouri.

  • poetry
  • history
  • violence
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Four Poems earlier voice

Subramania Bharati

Four poems: the collapse of Kali Yuga, New India, the liberation of women, and praise of the Goddess of Learning.

  • poetry
  • india
  • liberation
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