Editor’s Note: Marcus Bales responded to the CPR’s recent series of articles on Richard Blanco’s Inaugural reading with this poem.   Identity Poetical by Marcus Bales Identity Poet: I am the very model of identity poetical, My bio and my craftsmanship are blankly antithetical. The more that I’m selected for my principal ethnicity The easier [...]

  “Effulgent” by David M. Katz           Part seemed she of the effulgent thought –“Her Initials,” Thomas Hardy   Glitter, brilliance, candor, dazzle; Luster, splendor, lambent lightness; She evokes a lucid ghazal All shot through with flashing brightness: Of those words, he chose “effulgent.” Anhedonic to a fault, dour Hardy’s verse betrays his waning Adolescent [...]

A Poem by Jayanta Mahapatra [private] [/private]

[private]her night thoughts My baby wails. That I may rest I offer him a rubber breast And soon as waves by oil suppressed, He quiets. An underhanded trick Yet practical and politic- He cries for bread. I give him brick, But when night circles round to four I open to him like a door And [...]

Here in the dusty malarial lanes of Cuttack where years have slowly lost their secrets they wander in these lanes nicked by intrigue and rain and the unseen hands of gods in front of a garish temple of the simian Hanuman along river banks splattered with excreta and dung in the crowded market square among [...]