PW Covington

Our editors are pleased to spotlight this week’s work from regular contributor, friend, and family of the Windward Review and the People’s Poetry Festival: a Beat warrior for the people, a Water Protector at Standing Rock, a long-time activist for immigrant rights, often volunteering his time on the U.S. and Mexico border; a veteran and advocate for veterans’ health, an ally with the work of justice reform for indigenous peoples, people of color, LGBTQ+, and other marginalized peoples; an artist who was an invited guest to Havana, Cuba, with a special U.S. envoy of poets and writers at the 21st Festival de Poesia Internacional, 2017, and much more; thank you for fighting the good fight, PW, committing poetry on the way and back. Read some of his beat-heart work here on the spotlight, and order his gorgeous lyric embrace of the road, with his original photos along Historic Route 66 between The Motor Hotels of Central Avenue. And pick up his latest, hot off the international awards scene for LGBTQ fiction, North Beach and Other Stories; see below. 

The Count

When did you stop following the death count online?
After 5 thousand?
After 20?
Are you still clicking ‘refresh’, are you still keeping score?

The mathematics of carnage
Greater than
Less than

Division, long-form
Exponential grief
There are no rational numbers
 

Boogie Fights
 
Lace up your purse and let’s go
Twist and tread to the radio

Mind your boundaries
As you tear down walls

Retrogrades and ascendancies
     are more than anything else
          matters of perspective
               and interpretation

This is not the time to stop dancing

Indica on the Forenoon Watch

Vague
Undefined
Formless
Not here
Yet,
Not absent

The calm of your face
Three minutes
Before
Sublimation
Like high desert snow
Intoxication
Ego drifts away
On Indica smoke
Cloudy

We
Dissolve into each other
Feeding into traffic
From the entrance ramp
Drifting downstream
With salt and silt
And a thousand dry-land
Wishes, hopes and dreams
Murky
Nebulous
Smoke
Dream

We
Become more
By being
Less 

​PW Covington writes in the beat tradition of the North American highway. In recent years, he has been an invited panelist at The People's Poetry Festival, a Featured Poet at the (Rio Grande) Valley International Poetry Festival, and a Juried Poet at the Houston Poetry Fest. In 2019, his short fiction collection North Beach and Other Stories was named a Finalist in LGBTQ Fiction by the International Book Awards. Covington lives in Northern New Mexico, two blocks off of Historic Route 66. Follow him on Instagram @BeatPW.