If I Were to Rise Up All Colorless, If I Were to Rise Up All Colorless,
I could gather up old thoughts the way a mind distant in love brings about a gathering of stars. I don’t want people thinking I don’t care about the future. Plenty of people are wr…
Dec 6, 2018 / Books & the Arts / Laura Eve Engel
I Make a Toothpick Diadem & Crown Myself Token I Make a Toothpick Diadem & Crown Myself Token
Pink light sears the marbled bar & the straw in my drink is pastel. On wood-paneled walls, American Traditional paintings of my goddesses. Kati texts me : all this gaslighting…
Nov 8, 2018 / Books & the Arts / Raena Shirali
Self-Portrait as a Shadow Self-Portrait as a Shadow
for V. Lamar Word is I wasn’t born so much as skimmed off another living thing by a source of light. Let’s just say that you are light-skinned and the back of my mom’s hand is a co…
Nov 8, 2018 / Books & the Arts / Cortney Lamar Charleston
The Reverend Elijah P. Lovejoy, Editor of the ‘Alton Observer,’ Dies at the Hands of a Pro-Slavery Mob, Alton, Illinois (1837) The Reverend Elijah P. Lovejoy, Editor of the ‘Alton Observer,’ Dies at the Hands of a Pro-Slavery Mob, Alton, Illinois (1837)
Christ’s editor becomes Christ’s martyr: band the newspaper columns black for Elijah P. Lovejoy, who fired back. They threw his first three presses into the river. They came with g…
Oct 18, 2018 / Books & the Arts / Melissa Range
Extinction Extinction
When you are gone they will read your footprints, if they still read, as they might a poem about love— wandering in circles, here and there obscured, washed out in places by weathe…
Oct 11, 2018 / Books & the Arts / David Baker
Fashion’s Cycle Fashion’s Cycle
after Rana Plaza To be born is to risk the ghost of a factory collapse to try it on in intervals in front of the mirror. I loved the baby doll dress like no other. I can see it. I…
Jul 19, 2018 / Books & the Arts / Rosa Alcala
Eight Slateku Eight Slateku
The brown paper bag Is almost the greatest invention in the world The brown paper bag with handles Is * Alexander Graham Bell Thank you thank you thank you Where would we be withou…
Jul 19, 2018 / Books & the Arts / John Lee Clark
How-To How-To
Editor’s note: On July 24, 2018, The Nation and its poetry editors, Stephanie Burt and Carmen Giménez Smith, made this statement about the poem below, which con…
Jul 5, 2018 / Books & the Arts / Anders Carlson-Wee
Border Border
Things different over there the words for them different the things themselves all the same she put her flesh in the mouth of a coyote so that he would take her a cross to mark th…
Jul 5, 2018 / Books & the Arts / Sarah Pemberton Strong
We Learned the Mountains by Heart We Learned the Mountains by Heart
We went to school we ate pink beef we drank lots of water we snorted ritalin our nostrils turned red we lifted weights we killed a mama moose we sold her teeth online we poked each…
May 24, 2018 / Books & the Arts / Jackson Holbert