Karren L. Alenier, Elizabeth Alexander, Kwame Alexander, Abdul Ali, Francisco Aragón, Naomi Ayala, Jonetta Rose Barras, Holly Bass, Paulette Beete, Reginald Dwayne Betts, Derrick Weston Brown, Sterling A. Brown, Sarah Browning, Regie Cabico, Kenneth Carroll, Grace Cavalieri, William Claire, Carleasa Coates, Jane Alberdeston Coralín, Ed Cox, Teri Ellen Cross, Ramola D, Kyle Dargan, Ann Darr, Tina Darragh, Christina Daub, Hayes Davis, Thulani Davis, Donna Denizé, Joel Dias-Porter, Tim Dlugos, Thomas Sayers Ellis, Roland Flint, Sunil Freeman, Deirdre Gantt, David Gewanter, Brian Gilmore, Robert L. Giron, Barbara Goldberg, Patricia Gray, Michael Gushue, Daniel Gutstein, O.B. Hardison, Jr., Essex Hemphill, Randall Horton, Natalie E. Illum, Esther Iverem, Gray Jacobik, Brandon D. Johnson, Percy E. Johnston, Jr., Fred Joiner, Beth Joselow, Alan King, Michael Lally, Mary Ann Larkin, Merrill Leffler, Toni Asante Lightfoot, Saundra Rose Maley, David McAleavey, Richard McCann, Eugene J. McCarthy, Judith McCombs, Tony Medina, E. Ethelbert Miller, May Miller, Samuel Miranda, Miles David Moore, Yvette Neisser Moreno, Kathi Morrison-Taylor, Gaston Neal, Jose Emilio Pacheco, Jose Padua, Michelle Parkerson, Betty Parry, Linda Pastan, Richard Peabody, Adam Pellegrini, Elizabeth Poliner, Minnie Bruce Pratt, Liam Rector, Joan Retallack, Katy Richey, Joseph Ross, Ken Rumble, Robert Sargent, Gregg Shapiro, Myra Sklarew, Rod Smith, Alan Spears, Sharan Strange, A.B. Spellman, Hilary Tham, Maureen Thorson, Venus Thrash, Dan Vera, Rebecca Villarreal, Belle Waring, Joshua Weiner, Reed Whittemore, Terence Winch, Ahmos Zu-Bolton II.
Excerpts from
Full Moon On K Street: Poems About Washington DC
Edited by Kim Roberts
FULL MOON ON K STREET by Miles David Moore
The moon has your face tonight,
hiding behind black-violet veils
of clouds, coy, intimating nothing.
Like an orange outside the grasp
of a starving child, you stab my heart.
All longing is the same.
No natural light penetrates
this street; the lampposts rule.
The high-rises have mothered
them from their concrete wombs,
bidding us rejoice in coldness,
disdaining the celestial tease.
The moon has phases. Though I pray
not, you might be one. The clouds
pull tight, tight around your mouth.
Tambourine Tommy by Thomas Sayers Ellis
More man
Than myth, more myth
Than freak, he would come out
Between bands
In a harness of bells
And high-waters
Held together and up
By a belt of rope.
His skin was thick
As friendship, his spot-lit scalp
Clean as the repaired dome
Of the U.S. Capitol.
Rickety raw
And rickety strong,
He'd run from Barry Farms
To Mount Vernon
With bricks
Borrowed from the wall
Around St. Elizabeth's Hospital
In each hand.
There was struggle
In his dance,
Like first-of-the-month
Or Election Day downtown.
His arms tried to
Free Terrance Johnson,
His trickster legs
Rayful Edmond
But such drama
Never made him more
Than spectacle or more
Than beast.
No one thought
Of him as artist,
No one thought
Of him as activist.
His craft, the way
He beat himself
(head, shoulders, knees
and toes), proved he
Was one of us,
A soul searcher
Born and raised
In the District,
Proved he
Could reach in,
Blend, ease before entering,
Proved he
Was our phoenix,
Nobody's Stonestreet,
Part hustler, part athlete,
Tougher than all of Southeast.
Clay Street Cantata by Deidre R. Gantt
squeeze the metronome
it did not take a symphony
of shell casings to puncture
the silence of my evening nap
cue screech of tire
cue unintelligible wail andante
andante
just seven shots
an overture of evil intentions
tapped so close to my window
I think I taste gunpowder
but it’s really blood spurting
from my tongue pierced
by a bandolier of canines and incisors
(with feeling)
we don’t know nothing, man
we just headin to the carryout
we ain’t see who crashed homegirl’s whip
we ain’t see who fired up that truck
why you worried about what’s in my pockets
we ain’t do nothin to nobody
moments later
back flattened against the sofa base
elbow slack upon the cool, pine floor
metaphors ooze, trickle
find each other and form
inky puddles on a nearby page:
you heard about shorty up the block
feds ran up in his baby momma spot
found his weed sacks
crack water
pistols like war comin
his kids gon’ be grown
by the time he get home
