Poetic Medicine

By Harriet Maxwell Converse Based on a traditional Iroquois prayer  We who are here present thank the Great Spirit that we are here  to...

By Naomi Shihab Nye   Roselva says the only thing that doesn’t change    is train tracks. ...

By Karuna Ezara Parikh It is not Paris we should pray for. It is the world. It is a world in which Beirut reeling from bombings two days...

By Siegfried Sassoon   Soldiers are citizens of death's grey land, Drawing no dividend...

By Eve Lyons Watching Pulp Fiction on Israeli TV, the camp-like kibbutz fast asleep. Lexi complaining of bugs in the bed we shared. Sh...

By Audre Lorde The black unicorn is greedy. The black unicorn is impatient. The black unicorn was mistaken for a shadow or symbol and ...

By Karen Estrella After Joshua Bennett   “Say it” you command sing it and yet I seem to have lost my voice I seem to have lost The...

By Adrienne Su A crate of peaches straight from the farm has to be maintained, or eaten in days. Obvious, but in my family, they went so ...

Yad Mordechai. Those who fell here   still look out the windows like sick children who are not allowed outside to play. And on the hills...

By Sally Wen Mao In Lijiang, the sign outside your hostel        glares: Ride alone, ride alone, ride alone — it taunts you for the mile...

 By Anonymous When I was six years old, I gave my first blowjob. “It’s a game”, said He. “Don’t you want to play?” It was too big, and ...

By Langston Hughes Now dreams Are not available To the dreamers, Nor songs To the singers. In some lands Dark night And  cold stee...

By Wendell Berry When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my childr...

By Adrian C. Louis July 4th and all is Hell. Outside my shuttered breath the streets bubble with flame-loined kids in designer jeans ...

By Adam Stone The nun teaching sex education rolls the condom the wrong way over the banana in a room full of starved monkeys The shee...

By Bonnie Lyons He places anything resembling a cell phone against the side of his head and listens, and when his pudgy, dimpled finger ...

By Julia de Burgos Ay, ay, ay, that am kinky-haired and pure black kinks in my hair, Kafir in my lips; and my flat nose ...

By Cynthia Macdonald   He was eight when they gave him the felt overcoat— his birthday. ...

By Mary Oliver I worried a lot.  Will the garden grow, will the rivers flow in the right direction, will the earth turn as it was ...

By June Jordan First they said I was too light Then they said I was too dark Then they said I was too different Then they said I was to...