Editor's Choice brings you a poem from a new book selected as a must-read. Our feature editor today is Phillip B. Williams.
Golden

American Beauty (1999)
All the girls say they are women. Woven
like terry cloth. Straddling groins
to watch sternums gargle moans.

All the men never stop singing Because
by the Beatles. Crossed. Mouth gaped.
Confusing sap for home. Even I caught

in the snare traps of Calvin Klein spandex,
lap up sweat. Delighted blood was tantalized
by sculpture. Storytelling, in American standard

definition: Rose gardens, tragedy, no Blacks
faded in. Copper girls like me don't
get a character arc. Some skulls

splatter mid-dialogue. That's the mirage
of screenplay. Imitation meat. Men

appearing as if they will hold
themselves accountable.
from the book A DEAD NAME THAT LEARNED HOW TO LIVE / Game Over Books
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Black-and-white headshot of detained Egyptian poet, Galal al-Behairy
Egypt Urged to Release Hunger-Striking Poet  

"PEN America demanded Thursday that Egyptian authorities release Galal al-Behairy, who was first detained in March of 2018 and later handed a three-year sentence for spreading false news and insulting Egypt’s military. In a leaked letter that coincided with the fifth anniversary of his arrest, al-Behairy said he would refuse food and medication until he secured his freedom."

via AP
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Cover of Jennifer Atkinson's 2016 collection, The Thinking Eye
What Sparks Poetry:
Jennifer Atkinson on "Landscape with Jeffers and the Connecticut River"


"But how do we live with our knowledge and the emotional cloud of fear, guilt, anger, grief, and helplessness, a cloud that surrounds us, each of us alone, and all of us together? That cloud has become intrinsic to my ecopoetical work. Burdened with the beauty and loss and malicious awfulness ahead, weighted with the anxiety that hits whenever a winter day dawns without frost on the ground or another 'unprecedented' downpour rings in the gutter, how do I live?"
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