Portside

Anne Champion writes of a woman’s rage upon realizing after a certain election “how much the world/would hate me for being a girl…/how much men could get away with."

Jennifer Elise Foerster’s poetry depicts the natural environment—songbirds, hackberry trees, a butterfly named Question—fated for an apocalyptic ending.

Taking a global perspective, Ohio poet Amit Majmudar masterfully links issues of ecology and refugees.

New York poet Kathy Engel responds to the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute’s rescinding an award to Angela Davis.

New York poet Philip Fried traces the evolution of THE WALL, “the quintessential barrier/for keeping the future out and the past in.”

The casualties of a seemingly invisible war are brought home in J. L. L. Kroll’s poem about a single veteran.

California poet Patrick Phillips traces one legacy of the countrywide home loan crisis that followed the corporate Countrywide meltdown.

The award-winning poet Marge Piercy decries America’s refugee policies that would make an earlier poet, Emma Lazarus, weep.

Alabama poet Jacqueline Allen Trimble points to the slave origins of the Star Spangled Banner linking the song to today’s Black Lives Matter and other protests.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Stephen Dunn reminds us, even if life isn’t fair there’s kindness, even love.