Portside

W.D. Ehrhart’s poem “The Day I Discovered Racism” leaves the reader first with shock and then….

The Brooklyn poet William J. Harris has something to say about guilt by association as so many of your own best friends have been accused.

Did the Supreme Court overstep the definitions of the word “abortion” in the great leak of secrecy? Ask poet Lavinia Kumar.

Arkansas poet Gerry Sloan speaks to global absurdity (think Ukraine) “weapons of mass destruction place…victory out of reach…”

The poet Martín Espada recounts a childhood encounter of death, mourning the loss of baseball’s Puerto Rican star, Roberto Clemente.

The Persian poet Majid Naficy still awakens at night, mourning friends and family, victims of the Iranian regime.

Violence in North Carolina could not stop the drag show, as poet A.E. Hines depicts the resistance.

San Francisco poet Beau Beausoleil opens the new year with poetry of hope.

Entering the year’s end, Georgia poet Alice Friman suggests how much, how little, time carries as life goes on.

For poet Joseph Zaccardi, the Vietnam war lingers in memory for the fear it wrought among soldiers, but also the loss of camaraderie “after all these/years scattered across American towns and cities…”