Land Was Useless
“once / having a / taste / upon the tongue that I was never able to name / I ran a mad dash / for water”
Poetry
We are so grateful to all of our partner-poets for sharing their work with us—please enjoy their beautiful words in our Featured Poetry catalogue.
Aftermath
O hands that wound, / no one sung this song to you, / no one rimmed your neck with shame.
IF I’M CAUGHT BETWEEN A BADGE AND A HARD PLACE THREE HOURS AFTER THE STREET LIGHTS TURN ON
will you stain the sky in black smoke / will you tell ghost stories / over the ashes of this empire /
The Distinguished Thing: A Colloquy
By Diane Kerr
“One part of the fear of being dead is the fear of not being really dead.”
Pap Smear
By Ally Ang
“I have opinions / about the instrument of violence / holding my body open, its history / too brutal for metaphor, but I keep them / to myself.”
Poetry We Admire: Transition
Palette is back with another Poetry We Admire for May—curated by a new editor!
the selkie waits another night
“down at the shore the waves / are begging to freeze, are locking into each other / and breaking away again, are holding, holding, / and then letting go. i put my fingers in your mouth.”
The fall
“Perhaps, we live just in these / Boundless resources hedging / Us to an end no matter where / We’re standing,”
Turn Over
“Perhaps he ached to refresh / his smart phone screen to see numbers creep, / a few hundred at a time, as much care as a single vote / could ever endure, in this country counted by counties.”