It’s a book with the flow of poetry but the ebb of short stories – rightfully called “Shoetry”. This creation takes you to the roots of humanity - stripping back the veneers of life, society and interaction to see people and their ways in an entirely new light.

    From the body’s first mysterious eroticism to its final humiliation and pain, Gil Cuadros gives voice to both the beauty and sorrow of our common fate. His writing cuts like a double-edged sword—at times artful and sharp, at times unfiltered and raw. This is an awesome and haunting book.”—David Trinidad“The sensual, the expressive, the daring, the transformed become the matryrs of every era, every family. Their memoirs, heroics are our most devastating works of art. Gil Cuadros’s story ‘Unprotected’ is a classic of AIDS fiction and deserves a place of honor in the mosaic of American writing.”—Sarah Schulman“In a voice poised between plainspokenness and urgency, Gil Cuadros writes about the remnants of love in a devastated world. The poems and stories in City of God are as dire as they are beautiful, and sharp as a blow to the body.”—Bernard Cooper“I accuse Gil Cuadros of literary seduction in the nth degree…He makes me read on when I want to cry…I do not want to look at his words, and yet I cannot take my eyes away. His images sooth, burn, inspire. I accuse Gil Cuadros of language abuse—his stroke of silk, his pen a bludgeon. I accuse him of heart-bashing.”—Wanda ColemanGil Cuadros published stories and poems in Indivisible, High Risk 2, and Blood Whispers. His work is also on the compact disc, Verdict and the Violence: Poet’s Response to the LA Uprising. He was awarded the 1991 Brody Literature Fellowship, and was one of the first recipients of the PEN Center USA/West grant to writers with HIV. He lived in Los Angeles until his death in 1996.

    As Roger Reeves said in an interview, "While writing King Me, I became very interested in the mythology of king, the one who is sacrificed at the end of the harvest season. . . . For me, the myth manifests in the killing of young black men, Emmett Till, and in the ways America deems young, black male bodies as expendable—Jean Michel Basquiat, Mike Tyson, Jack Johnson. These are the young kings whom we love to kill—over and over again."From "Some Young Kings":The hummingbirds inside my chest,with their needle-nosed pliers for tonguesand hammer-heavy wings, have left a messof ticks in my lungs and a punctured lullabyin my throat. Little boy blue come blowyour horn. The cow's in the meadow. And Dorothy's alone in the corn with Jack, his black fingers, the brass of his lips, the half-moons of his fingernails clickingalong her legs until she howls—Charlie Parker. Charlie Parker. Charlie Parker . . .

    From vantage points on both sides of the Atlantic, Chatti investigates the perpetual exile that comes from always being separated from some essential part of oneself.“Tunsiya is Arabic for Tunisian/female, and Amrikiya is Arabic for American/female. This naming makes a cross of empowerment even as it is it requires great effort to bear it. Muslim female power is real and undeniable in thesecoming of age poems. In this collection, arcs spark between Tunisian and American citizenship, male and female duality, sky and earth, and yes and no. This is one of the punchiest and powerful chapbooks to appear in recent years. Leila Chatti is someone to watch.” —JOY HARJO“I marvel at Leila Chatti’s poems, their deceptive ease, their ‘calligraphy of smoke,’ their luminous concern with identity and self, love and family, her aesthetic command. ‘I orbited the town of my origin.’ She writes an America that belongs to the world, not the other way around. ‘What kind of world will we leave/ for our mothers?’ In poems filled with vision, desire, tenderness, she disarms our most guarded partialities, those we hide in our slumber, or deep under our tongues: ‘a Muslim girl who loved her father’; ‘ghost of a word mixed up with our bodies.’ Leila Chatti is a remarkable poet. Take notice.” —FADY JOUDAH“Leila Chatti is a major star. She writes exquisite, indelible, necessary poems, from two worlds mixing, rich as the threads of finest tapestries— glistening, warm. I’m struck by her vibrant sense of detail and perfect pacing. We need her honest, compassionate voice so much, at this moment, and everywhere.”—NAOMI SHIHAB NYE

    The poems in this collection are at once seductive and dangerous; they are possessed by a singular lyricism and awareness, and her call to action has a major presence in her work.

    Kendi, author of the number one bestseller How To Be an Antiracist, and fellow historian Keisha N. Blain, Four Hundred Souls begins with the arrival of twenty enslaved Ndongo people on the shores of the British colony in mainland America in 1619, the year before the arrival of the Mayflower. In eighty chronological chapters, the book charts the tragic and triumphant four-hundred-year history of Black American experience in a choral work of exceptional power and beauty. Contributors include some of the best-known scholars, writers, historians, journalists, lawyers, poets and activists of contemporary America who together bring to vivid life countless new facets to the drama of slavery and resistance, segregation and survival, migration and self-discovery, cultural oppression and world-changing artistic, literary and musical creativity. In these pages are dozens of extraordinary lives and personalities, rescued from the archives and restored to their rightful place in America's narrative, as well as the ghosts of millions more.Four Hundred Souls is an essential work of story-telling and reclamation that redefines America and changes our notion of how history is written.

    It covers nearly seventy years of practice from World War II to the present day.The extraordinary situations described here are the result of more than 1,000 years of hands-on bedside knowledge. The vignettes contain wisdom and insight gained the hard way, from long experience in the trenches (sometimes in actual trenches) performing tasks that range from the most humble to the most skilled.These true stories run the gamut from birth to death. They deal with everything from war, ER, ICU, to childbirth, pediatrics, adult care, surgery, home and homeless healthcare, the psych ward, oncology, the nursing home, and finally hospice.The sacrifice and service of these nurses--their courage, kindness, and determination--is breathtaking.If you've ever wanted to know what goes on behind the scenes of a hospital--you've come to the right place.

    The title story won several awards when it was published in 1925.

    Known throughout Europe for her live readings, Mort’s poetry and performances are infused by the politics of language and the poetry of revolution, where poems are prayers and weapons.when someone spends a lot of time runningand bashing his headagainst a cement wallthe cement grows warmand he curls up with itagainst his cheeklike a starfish . . .Valzhyna Mort is a Belarussian poet known throughout Europe for her remarkable reading performances. Her poetry has been translated into several languages, and she is the recipient of the Gaude Polonia stipendium and was a poet-in-residence at Literarisches Colloquium in Berlin, Germany. She currently lives in Virginia.Elizabeth Oehlkers Wright earned an MFA in translation from the University of Arkansas. Franz Wright won the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry for his book Walking to Martha’s Vineyard.

    Some poems incite, others console, as the poet—maestro of his own response and impresario of ours—Looks inward and out."—Los Angeles Times“We are faced with the unavoidable task of critical communication within a world which is empty and is not less full of injustices, punishments and sufferings because it is empty.”—from Pablo Neruda’s Nobel Prize address"This is the first complete English language translation of the late work by Neruda, the greatest of Latin American poets, translated by O'Daly, a specialist in Neruda's late and posthumous work....Highly recommended for poetry and Latin American collections." —Library Journal"William O. Daly's translation of Pablo Neruda's book-length poem, Fin de mundo, is a veritable poet's companion and guide to the twentieth century. This is Pablo Neruda at his best and most honest....Neruda's poems are a quiet but potent celebration of the resilience of the human spirit."—Sacramento Book ReviewIn this book-length poem, completely translated for the first time into English and presented in a bilingual format, Nobel Laureate Pablo Neruda composes a “valediction to the Sixties” and confronts a grim disillusionment growing inside him. Terrifying, beautiful, vast, and energized, Neruda’s work speaks of oppression and warfare, his own guilt, and the ubiquitous fear that came to haunt the century that promised to end all wars.World’s End also marks the final book in Copper Canyon’s dynamic nine-book series of Neruda’s late and posthumous work. These best-selling books have become perennial favorites of poetry readers, librarians, and teachers. Through this series, translator William O’Daly has been recognized as one of the world’s most insightful caretakers of Neruda’s poetry, and Publishers Weekly praised his efforts as “awe-inspiring.”My truest vocationwas to become a mill:singing in the water, I studiedthe motives of transparencyand learned from the abundant wheatthe identity that repeats itself.Pablo Neruda is one of the world’s beloved poets. He served as a Chilean diplomat and won the Nobel Prize in 1971.William O’Daly has dedicated thirty years to translating the late and posthumous work of Pablo Neruda. He lives in California.

    In "Know the Mother," author Desiree Cooper explores the complex archetype of the mother in all of her incarnations. In a collage of meditative stories, women-both black and white-find themselves wedged between their own yearnings and their roles as daughters, sisters, grandmothers, and wives.In this heart-wrenching collection, Cooper reveals that gender and race are often unanticipated interlopers in family life. An anxious mother reflects on her prenatal fantasies of suicide while waiting for her daughter to come home late one night. A lawyer miscarries during a conference call and must proceed as though nothing has happened. On a rare night out with her husband, a new mother tries convincing herself that everything is still the same. A politician's wife's thoughts turn to slavery as she contemplates her own escape: "Even Harriet Tubman had realized that freedom wasn't worth the price of abandoning her family, so she'd come back home. She'd risked it all for love." With her lyrical and carefully crafted prose, Cooper's stories provide truths without sermon and invite empathy without sentimentality."Know the Mother" explores the intersection of race and gender in vignettes that pull you in and then are gone in an instant. Readers of short fiction will appreciate this deeply felt collection.

    It is deep dive into emotions, empathy, acceptance, healing and insights into a different perspective towards life. The book embraces you in silence and stillness of thoughts. The book is an attempt to connect to souls, to reflect upon them, unbiased and together embrace a new beginning and a beautiful journey called life.

    Smith, as well as the work of other luminaries such as Elizabeth Alexander, Ishmael Reed, and Sonia Sanchez. Included are poems such as “No Wound of Exit” by Patricia Smith, “We Are Not Responsible” by Harryette Mullen, and “Poem for My Father” by Quincy Troupe. Each is accompanied by a photograph of the poet along with a first-person biography. The anthology also contains personal essays on race such as “The Talk” by Jeannine Amber and works by Harry Belafonte, Amiri Baraka, and The Reverend Dr. William Barber II, architect of the Moral Mondays movement, as well as images and iconic political posters of the Black Lives Matter movement, Malcolm X, and the Black Panther Party. Taken together, Of Poetry and Protest gives voice to the current conversation about race in America while also providing historical and cultural context. It serves as an excellent introduction to African American poetry and is a must-have for every reader committed to social justice and racial harmony.

    In Shivanee Ramlochan’s first collection of poems, Trinidad and Caribbean poetry finds an exciting new voice, one that displays a sharp intelligence, and iconoclastic spirit and fertility of imagination.

    G., I am a fool.What we feel in the solar plexus wrecks us.Halfway squatting on a crate where feeling happened. Caresses."--from "Dear Gonglya,"At once hyper-contemporary and archaic, erotic, indecorous, and extravagant like nobody else, Brenda Shaughnessy seeks outrageous avenues of access to the heart, "This strumpet muscle under your breast describing / you minutely, Volupt, volupt."