Portside

A survivor of the American war in Cambodia, the poet Bunkong Tuon lives with ancestral ghosts and gratitude for what is left.

“I will not be invisible,” writes NY poet Elizabeth Zelvin of her Jewish female identity, “I will not be herded/…I do not accept your yellow stars.”

New York poet Rebecca Schumejda offers a parent’s heart-rending account of a visit to her incarcerated child.

Poetry for Labor Day: The working-class persists, survives, says California poet Lita Kurth; but it sure isn’t easy.

Poet/photographer Jeannette Ferrary finds no small irony in the fact that Mattel has turned its products into a movie and the movie into more products, another merchandise opportunity.

Who is Jack Smith? asks the poet Carol Kanter. Cross your fingers. Is he the hero who shows that someone with a fancier name is not above the law? Look it up.

Arkansas poet Gerald Sloan reminds us that the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was no “act” but often lost to history and found again.

Mississippi poet Philip C. Kolin reminds us of the next imminent global disaster—bad water—and in some places it’s already here.

There’s more than a little irony in Peter Carroll’s poem about a woman who has been imprisoned for over 20 years being “free to start over.”

Poet Heidi Seaborn (a distinctive surname) envisions a death at sea by strangulation, though it didn’t quite happen that way.