Patricia Jabbeh Wesley: Erecting Stones
Here, in Congo Town, I’m picking up debris
from twenty years ago. Some remnants of bombs
and missile splinters, old pieces of shells from
the unknown past.
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer: The Prayers
I had not imagined drowning
was the way to reach the shore.
Doug Anderson: Prayer for Paul
The fist that held your heart releases, the hot knife of your shame turns to water, the kernels of blackened corn by which you counted your imagined crimes, are carried … Continue reading
Tom Engelhardt: When Will Climate Change Become the Crucial Issue in American Elections?
We’re now on a tipping-point planet.
Mike Vargo: The Not-So-Zen of Running
People admire my dedication to running. “What discipline you must have!” they say, and they’re wrong. I run because I enjoy it.
Video: Kae Tempest performs More Pressure | Grace
I used to think
Things were so clear
I was so near to nowhere
Fred Everett Maus: Listening to Bach, Three Days after a Shooting
It’s quiet in the room where I am writing.
Bright afternoon sun flows in, oblique,
glorious light in these days of mourning,
perfection pouring down on a shattered world.
Christina Rossetti: A Dirge
Why were you born when the snow was falling?
Charles Davidson: Foster’s Pie Pan
He was a kind and gentle old fellow with a smudged face and scruffy beard. On his best days he appeared as tarnished and weather-beaten as his tin pie pan still does even now.
Valerie Blue Bird Jernigan: Ending food insecurity in Native communities means restoring land rights, handing back control
For Indigenous people in the U.S., food is considered a sacred gift. Healthy and bountiful produce is received when we care for the land.
Barbara Crooker: Poem For My Birthday
Send me a heart of gratitude for this long afternoon
of goldenrod light falling across my typewriter
and a sky so blue I want to bite it like an apple.
Philippe Labro: The Rule of Engagement
The Rule of Engagement, along with the coat and tie dress code, was one of the university’s two unbreakable traditions. It involved saying “Hi!” to everyone you encountered, or – if that person were first to greet you – responding in kind. I was taken aback at first, not so much by the idea of saying hello to a stranger crossing campus, but by the mindset that required me to say it, and say it, and say it again, all day long, no matter my mood and no matter who it was coming up alongside me.
Abby Zimet: A Sharp Turn to the Right
At the Federalist Society’s 40th anniversary gala, 2,000 aging, fearful, sectarian dinosaurs in tuxes and ball gowns applauded their sordid work holding back the tides of change and time.
Gerard Robledo: Off Brand Man
No woman
can resist a man who cooks for them,
my brother said. It’s your only hope to find love
Jake Johnson: Citing Orwell, Judge Blocks ‘Positively Dystopian’ Censorship Law Backed by DeSantis
The federal judge lambasted Florida officials’ argument that “professors enjoy ‘academic freedom’ so long as they express only those viewpoints of which the state approves.”
Vox Populi 