Democracy depends on the free exchange of ideas. Help sustain it with a tax-deductible donation today.
Justin Jannise is the author of How to Be Better by Being Worse (BOA Editions 2021), which won the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize. A recipient of the Inprint Verlaine Prize and a former Editor of Gulf Coast, Justin studied at Yale, the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and the University of Houston, and now teaches at Prairie View A&M University.
I ask my brother if he can hear cicadas where he is. My brother doesn’t know what cicadas are. He is 40 years old. He asks me to repeat it.
A political and literary forum, independent and nonprofit since 1975. Registered 501(c)(3) organization. Learn more about our mission
For National Poetry Month, sign up for our newsletter and get a digital copy of our out-of-print chapbook Poems for Political Disaster—with work by Jorie Graham, Ilya Kaminsky, Solmaz Sharif, Juan Felipe Herrera, and much more.
Newsletter subscribers get our latest essays, reading lists, and exclusive editorial content (plus 10% off our entire store).
For National Poetry Month, sign up for our newsletter and get a digital copy of our out-of-print chapbook Poems for Political Disaster.