National Poetry Month 2024

1. “Substance Abuse Trial” by Jane Mead
2. “How to Not Be a Perfectionist” by Molly Brodak
3. “Tablets IV” by Dunya Mikhail
4. “Lullaby for the Immigration Ocelot” by Amalia Ortiz
5. “another plain truth” by Sabrina Benaim
6. “Danger: New Man” by Pat Mora
7. “Adjunct’s Pledge (a.k.a. Broken Treaty)” by Kamala Platt
8. “The Postmodern Llorona” by Gloria Anzaldúa
9. “& Nothing Happens” by Katana Smith
10. “when the drought ended” by César Leonardo de León
11. “When a Story is an Heirloom” by Priscilla Celina Suárez
12. “Strange Gospels” by Cynthia Cruz
13. “The Last Time that the World Ended” by PW Covington
14. “Border Crossings” by Natalie D-Napoleon
15. “What Sex Becomes” by Olivia Gatwood
16. “Three Little Words” by Rossy Evelin Lima
17. “All the Good Girls Go Missing” by Lauren Badillo Milicia
18. “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous” by Ocean Vuong
19. Excerpt from Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine
20. “Ode to TERFs” by H. Melt
21. “Unrest in Baton Rouge” by Tracy K. Smith
22. “Awestruck [Verb]” by Andrea Gibson
23. “they lie when they say grief lightens with time” by ire’ne lara silva
24. “Refugee” by Ana M. Fores Tamayo
25. “19.42” by Benjamín Naka-Hasebe Kingsley
26. “Love” by Assata Shakur
27. “Borderbus” by Juan Felipe Herrera
28. “For the two Utah congressmen who voted no because ‘there is a chance women will return to be hit a few more times in order to stay on welfare’” by Valarie Wallace

“For the two Utah congressmen who voted No, because “there is a chance women will return to be hit a few more times in order to stay on welfare.” by Valerie Wallace

“For the two Utah congressmen who voted No, because “there is a chance women will return to be hit a few more times in order to stay on welfare.”

                                                                  —October 1999
Ask the wife shot
& stabbed fourteen times
on her neighbor’s porch
the wife’s face
gone, on the courthouse
steps Ask the one dead in the courtroom
the one in her garage, against the garage wall
the one in her car, head split
in her children’s bedroom
ask her why she left,
if she’d go back
Before you tell her
she will return
ask if she can ever      ever
ever      get away

Wallace, Valerie. “For the Two Utah Congressmen Who Voted No, Because “There Is a Chance Women Will Return to Be Hit a Few More Times in Order to Stay on Welfare”.” Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, no. 16, 2001, p. 100.

from: “Borderbus” by Juan Felipe Herrera

from: "Borderbus"

No somos nada y venimos de la nada
pero esa nada lo es todo si la nutres de amor
por eso venceremos
We are nothing and we come from nothing
but that nothing is everything, if you feed it with love
that is why we will triumph
 
We are everything hermana
Because we come from everything

Herrera, Juan F. “Borderbus.” Poetry Foundation, www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/91751/borderbus. Accessed 2 April 2024.

“Love” by Assata Shakur

"Love"

Love is contraband in Hell,
cause love is an acid
that eats away bars.

But you, me, and tomorrow
hold hands and make vows
that struggle will multiply.

The hacksaw has two blades.

The shotgun has two barrels.

We are pregnant with freedom.

We are a conspiracy.

Shakur, Assata. “Love.” Assata: An Autobiography. Lawrence Hill Books, 1987, p. 130.

“$19.42” by Benjamín Naka-Hasebe Kingsley

"$19.42"

Japanese Interment photo:
Family outside     Home
American    flag in frame
NO JAPS   WANTED
in red   In red a mother’s elbow
stained   against windowsill
Here this ink of my ancestry

for sale on Ebay.

Clark, Fred. “Poston, Arizona. Living Quarters of Evacuees of Japanese Ancestry at This War Relocation Authority . . .” Wikimedia Commons, 1 Jun. 1942, commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Poston,_Arizona._Living_quarters_of_evacuees_of_Japanese_ancestry_at_this_War_Relocation_Authority_._._._-_NARA_-_536152.jpg. Accessed 31 Mar. 2024.

Kingsley, Benjamín Naka-Hasebe. “$19.42.” Colonize Me. Saturnalia Books, 2019.

from: “Refugee” by Ana M. Fores Tamayo

from: "Refugee"

And then, remember me—
detail by bloody detail;
reflect on what it is I represent,
and memorize these tears of blood
when you laugh at every refugee.

Fores Tamayo, Ana M. “Refugee.” Bad Hombres & Nasty Women: Anthology. Edited by Gabriel H. Sanchez and Isaac Chavarria. The Raving Press, 2017, pp. 16-21.

from: “they lie when they say grief lightens with time” by ire’ne lara silva

from: "they lie when they say grief lightens with time"

i want no more of family my brother is all i need of
love and grief ceaselessly intertwining
all i need of hoping and bleeding
hours of peace and hours of war

my brother in grieving for our dead mother our living father
his heart heavy with roiling griefs
his arms scarred over with living hurts

he cannot relieve the weight of my grief
i cannot relieve the weight of his and so we live
inhaling grief exhaling grief

lara silva, ire’ne. “they lie when they say grief lightens with time.” furia. Mouthfeel Press, 2010, p. 42-43.