Portside

“The stench of life is everywhere,” observes the Michigan poet Cal Freeman about human-made hazards wrought on the great inland waters.

We speak often in generalities of social justice, but California poet (and ex-lawyer) Anita Pulier gets down to the nitty-gritty in this small courtroom drama.

The poet Clint Smith draws a haunting link between Kaepernick the football player and his own son sitting in a grocery cart.

It’s the opposite of attention deficit disorder, observes poet Charlotte Muse; we inhabit “a cloud of mosquitoes,” while the other guy gets richer, stronger.

On this Veterans Day weekend, Kansas poet H.C. Palmer, a combat surgeon during the Vietnam war, offers the wisdom of a peacetime soldier.

New Mexico poet Beate Sigriddaughter laments the absurdities of war, killing in the cause of “righteous dreams.”

Among jackals and ostriches, poet Timothy Donnelly satirizes the Court of King Don with pitch-perfect mimicry.

Washington state poet Risa Denenberg writes of the fragility of human life on this imperiled planet while “Our sun winks…/without ambition.”

On the anniversary of Columbus’s landing in the Caribbean, Virginia poet Karenne Wood depicts the tragic result for North America’s indigenous people.

In multicultural San Francisco, poet Peter Neil Carroll captures the local support for refugee rights.