Welcome to “Poetry at The Arts Fuse.” A new poem every Thursday

AGENDA

delete gender, scrutinize women
X out X, replace with F or M

delete diversity, delete equity,
delete inclusion including

inclusive, exclude exclusion, note
use of include number on form

distrust disability, disadvantaged
question equality, culture

challenge climate, replace climate
change with climate resilience

question racial, minority, marginal,
historically, bias, Hispanic, Black

question trauma, scrutinize status,
question Spanish, remove La Casa Blanca

Martha Collins’s eleventh book of poetry is Casualty Reports (Pittsburgh, 2022); her tenth, Because What Else Could I Do (Pittsburgh, 2019), won the Poetry Society of America’s William Carlos Williams Award. Her fifth volume of co-translated Vietnamese poetry, Dreaming the Mountain by Tuệ Sỹ (Milkweed, 2023), was a PEN America award finalist. Collins founded the U.Mass. Boston creative writing program and later taught at Oberlin College. Her website is marthacollinspoet.com

Note: Hey poets! We seek submissions of excellent poetry from across the length and breadth of contemporary poetics. See submission guidelines here. The arbiter of the feature is the magazine’s poetry editor, John Mulrooney.

— Arts Fuse editor Bill Marx