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November 2021

Collaborative Works; Cover Artist: Jianan Liu/goodillustration.com

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

Eliseo Ortiz
Kabel Mishka Ligot
Patricia Smith
Nilufar Karimi
She Who Has No Master(s)

See Table of Contents

Green and orange puzzle pieces spelling POETRY move into place.

From this Issue

- poem
  
  4 Telling
  
  By Tracie Morris, Harryette Mullen, Jo Stewart & Yolanda Wisher
  
  No bitter peach or stranger fruit
  grafted to a noble tree,
  she takes her place in lineage
  
  areola diversity, oracular
  who looks to see, edges of a baby’s ear,
  that child’s cuticles
  
  in line though long shot to a throne.
  How dark might she be?
  How dark becomes...
  
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- poem
  
  Meshkadoonaawaa Ikidowinan: Exchanging Words
  
  By Kimberly Blaeser, Molly McGlennen & Margaret Noodin
  
  baazhigwaadiziwin—persistence
  
  Ningii-bazhinemin, we have barely escaped
  nightly, a threshold looms in the cold.
  
  Again, we sing ourselves strong—
  Anishinaabikwewag, women of history and persistence.
  
  Observe: constellations have long illuminated patterns,
  relentless stories, adizookanag,
  of who we might be, noongom aawiiyaang
  gemaa waa-aawiiyang, or become.
  
  Across skies trace belonging, ezhi-dibendagoziyang
  in...
  
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- poem
  
  Abecedarian after border speeches
  
  By Nilufar Karimi & Eliseo Ortiz
  
  YOU ARE READING A BOUNDARY, A CREASE, WITH DEFINED EDGES, ENCLAVES, ENDS OF FIELDS, FINGERTIPS, FORTRESSES, FAILURES.
  
  Read More

Table of Contents

POEMS

Su Cho
- Editor’s Note
Tracie Morris, Harryette Mullen, Jo Stewart, and Yolanda Wisher
- 4 Telling
- Tracie Morris, Harryette Mullen, Jo Stewart, and Yolanda Wisher on the Collaborative Process
Kimberly Blaeser, Molly McGlennen, and Margaret Noodin
- Meshkadoonaawaa Ikidowinan: Exchanging Words
- Kimberly Blaeser, Molly McGlennen, and Margaret Noodin on the Collaborative Process
Nilufar Karimi and Eliseo Ortiz
Kim Seong Eun and Cindy Juyoung Ok
Cindy Juyoung Ok
- Cindy Juyoung Ok on the Collaborative Process
Miriam Karraker
Jan Dennis Destajo and Kabel Mishka Ligot
- The root of our shared word for “home” is “to be consoled”
- Jan Dennis Destajo and Kabel Mishka Ligot on the Collaborative Process
Noam Dorr and Cori A. Winrock
- Midway upon the Journey of Our Life – Somehow I'd Wandered into the Middle of a Letter
- Noam Dorr and Cori A. Winrock on the Collaborative Process
Gabrielle Bates and Jennifer S. Cheng
- So We Must Meet Apart
- Gabrielle Bates and Jennifer S. Cheng on the Collaborative Process
She Who Has No Master(s)
- Would That
- She Who Has No Master(s) on the Collaborative Process

FROM "THE WITNESS STONES PROJECT"

Marilyn Nelson
Rhonda M. Ward
Antoinette Brim-Bell
Kate Rushin
Antoinette Brim-Bell, Marilyn Nelson, Kate Rushin, and Rhonda M. Ward
- Marilyn Nelson, Rhonda M. Ward, Antoinette Brim-Bell, and Kate Rushin on the Collaborative Process

FROM "CROWNS"

Patricia Smith
- Nap Unleashed
- Afterword

Contributors