Portside

Reflecting contemporary tensions that explode into violence, Virginia poet Mary Anna Dunn explores the failures of imagination to create resolution.

Asked to addressed the word “resistance,” New York poet Esther Cohen responds “courage,” which is not what the teacher expects, which helps define “resistance.”

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.”

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.

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.

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.”

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.