Barbara Crooker: In the Middle
Each day, we must learn
again how to love, between morning’s quick coffee
and evening’s slow return.
Baron Wormser: The Weight
Desperate for an assertive American task, people will grasp at some very wretched straws.
Federico García Lorca: New York (Office and Denunciation)
I know there are mountains and eyeglasses
And wisdom. But I didn’t come to see the sky.
I’m here to see the clouded blood,
the blood that sweeps machines over waterfalls
and the soul toward the cobra’s tongue.
Audio: Lucille Clifton reads “Homage to my Hips”
Lucille Clifton (1936–2010) reads her poem “Homage to my Hips”. A prolific and widely respected poet, Lucille Clifton’s work emphasizes endurance and strength through adversity, focusing particularly on African-American experience … Continue reading
Sydney Lea: The Yogurt Cure
I grow more and more reminiscent, it seems, though that’s a relative assessment. Like my old poetic hero Wordsworth, I opted for an elegiac tone very young in my writing … Continue reading
Sappho: Fragments, on Love and Desire
Like the sweet-apple reddening high on the branch,
High on the highest, the apple-pickers forgot,
Or not forgotten, but one they couldn’t reach…
Katharine Gammon: Overcoming Climate Chaos with Comedy
Turns out, being able to laugh at something increases our ability to understand it—and take action.
Al Ortolani: Picking Ticks Off the Dog
Pulling ticks is not for the faint at heart.
Derrick Z. Jackson: How Climate Change and ‘Heat Islands’ are Killing Black People
America’s history of redlining and other forms of housing discrimination means that climate change and the Black community are on a deadly collision course.
Michelle Bitting: Reporting Back
Those free-floating cabezas—
ancient, adrift
on song-strung shores
are always ready to party.
Paul Christensen: Not All Roads Lead To The Banks
The word for temple in Latin is fane, and the market that stands before it is profane. And that word has come down to us as meaning anything other than the sacred, the dark side of human maneuvering and sleight-of-hand.
Matthew J. Parker: The Shine On her Shoes
With another Memorial Day upon us, I again find myself pondering its magnitude, which invariably brings me back to 2016, when President Obama met Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial on May 27.
Elsa Gidlow: Chance
Strange that a single white iris
Given carelessly one slumbering spring midnight
Should be the first of love,
Yet life is written so.
Carlene M. Gadapee: Give Peace a Chance
The Burning World by Sherod Santos is a complicated and arresting mytho-historical and contemporary narrative demonstrating the pain of war and conflict.
Tony Gloeggler: Autistic Basketball
you rise with the memory
of your first taste of schoolyard
grace and lay it softly against
the backboard
Clarence Lusane: Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis
Two Peas in a White Nationalist Pod
Vox Populi 