Portside

Fifty-some years after the Cuban Missile Crisis, we are still waiting for the end--not necessary of the world, but the US embargo. Poet Peter Neil Carroll recalls an October day when Paul Simon, relatively unknown, sang for a class of nervous students at Queens College and how a young Cuban today looks back at that moment.

"a mirror/ if our eyes are strong enough," so the poet J. David Cummings evokes the death of children: at Hiroshima, on the Mediterranean today.

The poet Jamaica Baldwin writes, “This piece was written in response to the daily lies espoused by the new president and his administration, the emergence of the phrase ‘alternative fact’ in the political lexicon, and the simple fact of Trump’s presidency.”

He said, she said: The effects of sexual exploitation of women on campus depends on the credibility of one's point of view. Francesca Bell's poem "Committee Work" unveils this not-so-delicate dialogue.

Worried about the Great Wall separating Mexico from the USA? California poet Amy Meier offers a mild antidote to your fears.

Our ship of state, writes Berkeley poet Susan Cohen, may be facing extinction, but there's no practical escape that will suffice; alternatively, we may resist.

Earth Day on our minds, what can be more rueful than what's happened to the once-ignored state of North Dakota, fracked to its core? Poet Debra Marquart sings a lament.

If History is a room, writes the California poet Henry 7, reneau jr., there are reasons why he cannot enter, reasons that disqualify him as a person of interest in history, reasons he cannot comply with: "i would have to bridge the distance between get rich or die tryin'," not to mention his desire not to be complicit.

The Persian American poet draws on ancient tradition to condemn a certain political leader's confusion of truth and falsehood in our own times.

Carolina poet Dan Albergotti ponders the death of democracy--and worse--asking: "Who chose this suicide?"