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April 2023

Cover artist: Tré Seals

The oldest monthly devoted to verse in the English-speaking world.

  • Nikki Giovanni
  • CAConrad
  • Juan Felipe Herrera
  • Haki R. Madhubuti
  • Sonia Sanchez
From this Issue
    • poem
      By CAConrad

       





                a potato
                   born by
                     shovel
                     I am a
                  bride of
                poetry in
               my orange
              and purple
             gown an
             unequaled
             extinction
              machine
               pushing
                strollers through
                 ecosystems of
              concrete and plastic
      we camel through the journey
        with our new playbook for
           where plunging hands go
                              don’t be weird
                           about this
                         you can be a
                       bride of
                     poetry
                    too
       

    • poem
      By Sandra Cisneros
      These days I admit
      I am wide as a tule tree.
      My underwear protests.
      And yet,

      I like myself best
      without clothes when
      I can admire myself
      as God made me, still
      divine as a maja.
      Wide as a fertility goddess,
      though infertile. I am,
      as they say,
      in decline. Teeth
      worn down,...

    • poem

      Appeared in Poetry Magazine Apology, with Interruptions

      By Rita Dove
      Mayhap—what
      a curious word,
      all misfortune and
      circumstance or pure
      terror (as soon as fate
      gets her hand
      on the string). Why
      do we need free will,
      anyway? What is this
      beautiful freedom
      we long for, then promptly
      grow bored within?
      I meant to say
      perhaps, but this
      conjoined relic slipped out
      instead. What was...

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POEMS