Poetic Medicine

By Ernesto Cardenal It’s not that I think the people raised this statue to me, because I know better than you that I ordered it myself. ...

By Marge Piercy “You can always go to another state” to have your abortion just so long as you’re rich, have a nanny to watch your ki...

By Patricia Smith They call me skinhead, and I got my own beauty. It is knife-scrawled across my back in sore, jagged letters, it’s in t...

By Marge Piercy What can they do to you? Whatever they want. They can set you up, they can bust you, they can break your fingers, they...

By Cory Booker After the election, May we seek to practice Civic Alchemy May we turn: Battle Ground Into Common Ground Swing St...

By James Baldwin At the dark street corner where Guilt and Desire are attempting to stare each other down (presently, one of them wil...

By Shadab Zeest Hashmi Discard old sponges. Wash her bitter with dried gourd This to surface the memory of aniseed She has walked down a...

By Cinthia Ritchie Fog fills the water, it’s hard to see the mountains, we’ve been camped here for days, like my own skin, ordinary, w...

By W.S. Merwin  Dragonflies were as common as sunlight hovering in their own days backward forward and sideways as though they were mem...

By Adrienne Rich Out in this desert we are testing bombs, that's why we came here. Sometimes I feel an underground river forcing ...

By Roque Dalton Like you I love love, life, the sweet smell of things, the sky-blue landscape of January days. And my blood boils up ...

By Pablo Neruda You will ask: But where are the lilacs? And the metaphysics covered with poppies? And the rain that often struck his wo...

By Bob Dylan Crickets are chirpin' the water is high There's a soft cotton dress on the line hangin' dry Window wide open Af...

By Georgeann Eskievich Rettberg Hell, steelworkers built this country. I work like a jackass in there. I deserve the money. They take h...

By Marge Piercy The moon is dark tonight, a new moon for a new year. It is hollow and hungers to be full. It is the black zero of begin...

By Marcia Falk Today is the birthday of the world. But the world knows nothing of this invention. The world just keeps moving about it...

By Nick Norwood, Michael McFalls, Marc Olivié and Marleen De Bode Olivié now that you are here amid crag and gleam mist-rise and vapor ...

By Langston Hughes I, too, sing America. I am the darker brother.  They send me to eat in the kitchen  When company comes,  But I lau...

By Serena Williams She turns her disappointment into triumph. Her grief into joy. Her rejections into approvals. If no one believes in h...

By Denise Duhamel “There was a time when Barbie couldn’t even bend her knees,” I told my nieces Kerri and Katie who sit before me on a l...