Portside

The Persian poet Majid Naficy draws on his memory of political terror to evoke present-day emotions caused by the virus.

California poet Jessica Cohn touches the early days of shelter-in-place “when hope was/a shell game.”

2020, the year, the eyesight, the zeroes, so the Mississippi poet Philip Kolin greets the new decade, calling up the failures of Trumpism in his own words.

This extract from Nâzım Hikmet’s poetry speaks to the real crisis in these times of trouble.

New York poet Esther Cohen addresses the suddenness of change and notices what hasn’t changed at all.

A version of the boy who cried wolf, here now are the consequences of government lies.

“Donated clothes” from California, the woman who sewed meets the wearer, “a Bosnian woman/Hiding in London”—the global coincidence that inspires “Tracking the enemy.”

Colorado poet Jared Smith raises the question of what the American Dream means in the ordinary lifetime of an ordinary person.

“This poem is an elegy for a dear friend and mentor, Luis Garden Acosta,” writes Martin Espada, whose “activism…changed his community in Brooklyn [and] the lives of untold thousands like me.”

Paul Robeson’s standing up to HUAC, the subject of Roy Bentley’s poem, “has//nothing to explain…/the raised middle finger….”