Portside

Kim Shuck, current poet laureate of San Francisco, explores the complications-- mixed-up heritages, commercial indifference—of seeing the “Great Urban Indian Poem published “because culture is at its/Root not something that can be sold by chain stores.”

The Australian poet Joyce Parkes brings us the word “swags,” meaning the bedding rolls used by homeless persons, asking why in a wealthy country so many remain homeless.

In our age of cultural pluralism, mixing ethnicity, race, religion, gender, not to mention economics, the poet Diana Goetsch enjoys an evening celebrating what’s different and what’s not

"Oral history we call it: I want his past, he hopes/ for my future." So poet/historian Peter Neil Carroll traces the story of a veteran of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade who fought the good fight, stuck to his principles to the end.

As part of the so-called second wave of feminism, Jeannette Ferrary’s “Negatives” captures a woman’s sense of awakening during the 1970s, much as women today raise their voices with renewed anger about male chauvinism.

From the beginning of a day, any day, writes Colorado poet Jared Smith, taking a continental view of people at work, we all go through “the motions” and “the same work has to start and be filled each day…”

Marsha de la O, a southern California poet, depicts most tenderly the hard wages of environmental pollution.

New Hampshire poet Jane Philips Meneghini writes eloquently of a war veteran's return “with pain and secrets.” Its title derives partly from a billboard seen outside Tyndall Air Force Base in Panama City, Fla., that boasted “Global Vigilance, Reach and Power for America.”

Tuesday is Election Day: the Iranian poet Behzad Molavi reminds us what to do.

Fresno poet Sara Borjas's poetry captures the imagination of an ordinary working man, ever hoping a windfall will land in his hands.