Portside

Approaching the 3rd anniversary of the murder of George Floyd, the crisis of race relations remains contested ground, even in liberal states like Minnesota.

Not a robot, suggests poet Lisa Allen Ortiz. Prove it and she deftly does.

“I am Latina,” insists poet Rafaellla Daumas. “And I am not another curiosity to be stared at/ And I am not just another stereotype.”

Eco poetry: California poet Dee Allen looks back and forward to the fight to save the South Atlanta forests.

Colorado poet Josh Lefkowitz reads the writing on the wall, asking what it means.

The poet W.D. Ehrhart, veteran of both the Marines and Vietnam Veterans Against the War asks seriously, how can people like Henry Kissinger claim a lifetime of “no regrets”?

Schools may be in trouble, assesses Vermont poet Ann Fisher, but not the fault of students who create their own “precipitation” despite “all the measured wisdom/ we’ve provided.”

Ukrainian refugee poet Oksana Maksymchuk depicts life in exile as “an endless cellar/that’s now her mind.”

When the newly elected Governor of Oklahoma committed his state to Christian nationalism, the poet and war veteran H.C. Palmer raises some objections to such gestures.

On the anniversary of the war, Ukrainian-born poet Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach appeals for public attention of the crisis in her homeland.