Portside

The full title of prize-winning poet Jane Hirshfield's poem, "Day Beginning with Seeing the International Space Station And a Full Moon Over the Gulf of Mexico and All its Invisible Fishes," reveals the contingency of the natural world and the human imprint upon it, for better and for worse.

Seattle poet Jed Myers speaks of the fear of strangers, how our eyes assess and judge newcomers, searching for the glimmer that makes them one of us.

"Whoever said a black woman/was always liberated/didn’t walk in my Mama’s heels," says southern California poet Angela Franklin, a poet active in the Social Justice movement.

Rosie Flores, a young Latina poet from Los Angeles, speaks to the cultural differences that surround daily life. “Roses are red and we are brown,” she writes, “…we didn’t cross the border the border crossed us.”

Chuck and Nancy came to the high priest to cut a deal and think they did, but not everyone believes that the high priest can stick to a deal. And so it goes....

Southern California poet Julayne Elle explores the injustices of a US law involving the adoption of children from foreign countries who remain exposed to deportation.

Poet Wendy Drexler picks a single marking on a tunnel wall to celebrate the value a single aspect of someone’s labor.

For the Labor Day holiday, David Salner offers a poet’s glimpse of what it feels like not to be working while working a long shift at night.

The circus--as in Bread & Circus--is coming to town but as Oregon poet Amy Miller explains with brilliant clarity, it will not set you free.

Forget Colbert, Stewart, Woody Allen. Check out Berkeley, California's Jack Foley. Then do something.