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Tag: Poem

Poetry
Matthew Lippman

most days, during some mid-day hour, / I close my eyes and say the Sh’ma. / But it’s always the wrong time of day, / and it’s the only prayer I know

Poetry
Aaron Magloire

I’m not sure anymore / how far joy gets us

Poetry
Abu Bakr Sadiq

a presenter / interrupts a program to break the news of migrants / found dead on the shores of river niger. i look down / the streets through my window.

Poetry
Tadeusz Dąbrowski

My life too has ended
many times over. Now I’m
doing all I can to return

Poetry
Kristin Emanuel

even the long-gone
once knew tenderness.

Poetry
Ashley Warner

it’s happening / again. everything / outside me / get to switching  / channels. brown black / carbon black / black cat black

Poetry
Meghana Mysore

shouting / the same words but in different languages

Poetry
Ben Doller

there is nothing but performance; the language that stretches to capture us all

Poetry
Evaristo Rivera

I begin to feel my body rise / and I can believe / in what freedom must feel like.

Poetry
Sandra Simonds

To not have had the luxury to think “the world is over,” but to feel it instead.

Poetry
Alexis V. Jackson

My grandmother tells me she loved you fiercely
in the way she reaches for me when your name
is spoken.

Poetry
Njoku Nonso

The stones are endlessly weeping in the dark. Or is it
the bird-chatter of rain. O darling, are you writing
another poem about trees? No, not trees but ghosts
that live on trees and their legend of never-let-gos.

Poetry
Leah Claire Kaminski

When you were / in the Everglades we canoed from Flamingo and through the canals.

Poetry
Monica Cure

My feet moved down another street / and I saw the shape they would draw / on the map in my mind.

Poetry
Brandi Nicole Martin

Look at my heartbeat / and its consequence, / that cup warm on my palm

Poetry
Jeff William Acosta

How would I know / when I’m empty and quiet like breath?

Poetry
Hannah Craig

But I do miss the hymns, / the small, hard apples with their dimpled skin. I do miss / things.

Poetry
Brian Clifton

As a student, I stitched / a cadaver together / while my professor / said you must / be a predator . . .

Poetry
Isha Camara

I ain’t dead and in this form, / I can matrix my way out of your bullet.

Poetry
Caio Kaufman

I was also spat across an ocean

and clung to the edge of an unwilling continent.

Poetry
Simone Person

Selected by Sonia Sanchez as a winner of the 2021 Boston Review Annual Poetry Contest

Poetry
Justin Jannise

I ask my brother if he can hear cicadas where he is. My brother doesn’t know what cicadas are. He is 40 years old. He asks me to repeat it.

Poetry
Adebe DeRango-Adem

Selected by Sonia Sanchez as a winner of the 2021 Boston Review Annual Poetry Contest

Poetry
Raisa Tolchinsky

in your carpeted office you lay my life down / and say open up to that small room in my sternum.

Poetry
Porsha Olayiwola

a slave ship hauls / bodies as cargo and / both the surface and ocean floor / rifts. even the clouds break / open in sobs.

Poetry
Anthony Okpunor

loving mother, come watch me be patient, / watch how i describe things that never leave my mouth

Poetry
Willie Lee Kinard III

Selected by Sonia Sanchez as a finalist for the 2021 Boston Review Annual Poetry Contest

Poetry
Lolita Stewart-White

Selected by Sonia Sanchez as a finalist for the 2021 Boston Review Annual Poetry Contest

Poetry
Maya Marshall
An Abortion Ban is a body snatcher, is an ethnic cleansing. The uterus is a cave, is an incubator, is a vault, is a self-destructing bomb, is a thoroughfare.
Poetry
Donia Elizabeth Allen
. . . I am nott afrayde of swells that lift mee off my feet, or of a strong undertow
Poetry
Don Mee Choi, Kim Hyesoon
The therapist says, Picture a bird in your mind What kind of bird is it?
Poetry
Kemi Alabi
our bloom game too strong / altar stays red candle cinnamon-lit sweet flicker cracking into prance
Poetry
Nijla Mu’min
“Just let me just lay here and do nothing cause boss bitches get lonely too”
Poetry
Day Heisinger-Nixon
“Room, Room, Room, in the many Mansions of Eternal Glory for Thee and for Everyone” & “Publick Universal Friend Adopts a More Androgynous Appearance . . .”
Poetry
Terrance Hayes

Remembering poets Lynda Hull and Michael S. Harper, with original portraits

Poetry
Cheswayo Mphanza

Two white men carrying briefcases walk in on a congressional meeting held by African leaders dressed in Western attire. Clapping at the president who resembles Léopold Senghor. He uses words like “revolutionary” and “independence” and they garner an applause.

Poetry
Felicia Zamora

If I cross paths with myself on the sidewalk, I’m not sure I will recognize my own face.

Poetry
Diamond Forde
Our bodies, temples—shouldn’t that mean anyone can worship? Shouldn’t that mean it’s okay to dip my hips into a communion bowl?
Poetry
Kyoko Uchida
Poetry
José B. González

The sewing machines have been pushed aside to a far-off world, but I can still hear their thumping

Poetry
Ocean Vuong

As my relatives melted, I stood
on one leg, raised my arms, eyes shut, & thought:
tree tree tree as death passed me—untouched.

Poetry
Hazem Fahmy

Hazem Fahmy was a finalist for the 2019 Boston Review Annual Poetry Contest and this poem appeared in our arts anthology Allies.

Poetry
Naro Alonzo
They’ve stolen a finger bone, carved it into a whistle, which when blown,
summons extinct birds . . .
Poetry
Funto Omojola
mom calls me often to ask if i’ve been doing my nightly devotionals
Poetry
Sarah Helen Bates

On any map in any so-called season, I can recognize myself at least once.

Poetry
heidi andrea restrepo rhodes
I confess, I was never made to shake obeisant . . .
Poetry
Tomás Q. Morín

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That’s why there are no paywalls on our website, but we can’t do it without the support of our readers. Please make a tax-deductible donation to help us create a more inclusive and egalitarian public sphere—open to everyone, regardless of ability to pay.

"An indispensable pillar of the public sphere."

That’s what sociologist Alondra Nelson says of Boston Review. Independent and nonprofit, we believe in the power of collective reasoning and imagination to create a more just world.

That’s why there are no paywalls on our website, but we can’t do it without the support of our readers. Please make a tax-deductible donation to help us create a more inclusive and egalitarian public sphere—open to everyone, regardless of ability to pay.