Over this summer PRoB will be featuring the work of upcoming readers that will be appearing at Pittsburgh’s venerable Hemingway’s Poetry Series, now celebrating it’s 52nd anniversary. Poet Camille Rankine will be appearing on June 9th, 2026 at Hop Farm Brewing Company in Lawrenceville alongside Valerie Bacharach and Rebecca Jung, as well as past PRoB contributors Jason Irwin and Lisa Slage Robinson.
E Pluribus Unum
by the glow of our equality I keep myself inside and when the sun
descends I descend and furtive in the dark I take
my difference for a walk
a woman stands before me with an open mouth as if to speak
I fix my face into position something kin to understanding
I have settled all my awe and weary at our living into
if it’s all the same I say I reach my hand into the darkened day
as a woman turns her open mouth
closed and far away
and looking up we watch the kingdom on the hilltop
shift to rearrange and all the same
parts click and lock into their place
I move toward the living after all the only ones still here
for which I stand or rather have considered amity
and how much of a man am I what fraction
of me is mine and what belongs to a pattern
repeated endlessly I do not want to be afraid
I have decided I am not
afraid and in this hopeful state I call out to the living
we have been cleansed word has come down
from the hilltop we are one
people so we put our differences aside and quiet
our single mind we rest against the dark and let our eyes
adjust accordingly
