PEN Poetry Series
Through 2019, the PEN Poetry Series published work by writers from all over the world.
Conditions
ninety thousand children crossing the border in the last three years what thirst what listening what refuge what desert harbor what desert keeps at bay what keens what dims… More
Four Poems by Lily Clifford
Uncomfortable in a hospital gown, fallow. The thing I’m praising is wretchedness. It gets easier, as easy as a slur. The tongue root and the doctor’s late, blinking the… More
from The Sissies
A cop knelt and kissed the feet of a priest, / and I threw up at the sight of that. // My only security has been to garden civility… More
Toward the Great Unity
I was young, always returning to the municipal building, / where an iron lamp hung, a flickering vestige of history. / And when I moved my belongings in with… More
Testimony Over Tape Recorder
I am the youngest. I am 85 and yesterday, / I was 15 in a military station; / my friends each dying, one by one; / and now I… More
Five Poems by Danez Smith
light fell on a door, & in the door / a me i didn’t know & knew, the now me / whose blood blacks & curls back like paper… More
Scrambled Eggs
Plunder culture, culture plunder / Going into debt so as to be employable so as to slowly pay off that debt, or never, or having been born into it,… More
Reading Tsvetaeva on Father’s Day
the last safe days of my life / what I knew, what I bound with string / a word of hers, repeated / a kiss on the forehead —… More
Four Poems by francine j. harris
You say: your french words make me feel bad. You should ask / if he means it. If he means papillon you. Is he thinking of a dead one.… More
Five Poems by Joshua Jennifer Espinoza
No one says what they mean / and people die from it. / Where did this world come from? / Not nowhere. / Not nothing. / The dead trans… More
Support for the freedom to read with exclusive designs by Todd Parr, Mike Curato, Art Spiegelman, and more!
