Vox Populi

A curated webspace for Poetry, Politics, and Nature with over 6,000,000 visitors since 2014 and over 9,000 archived posts.

Jerome Bergland: The Dreaminations of Jianqing Zheng

Jianqing Zheng long ago established himself as one of the most thrilling and gifted writers of haibun and tanka prose.

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Jianqing Zheng: Dreaminations

[…] young woman with a basket in her hand walking down the road, her long skirt swaying like sunlight rustling with shriveled leaves. Is she taking lunch to her husband harvesting cotton or going berry picking in the woods?

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Cynthia Atkins: When Harry Met Sally

A light quaked on earth, because when the waitress
gasped and blushed, we gasped and blushed,
sitting in the plush dark aisles to our interiors.

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Robert Hayden: Those Winter Sundays

What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?

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Rose Mary Boehm: Poinciana and then some

Green canopies aflame with
an unreal red, lit by the dying sun.
Yonhi in the plastic chair, blue baseball
cap pushed back. He’s seen it all.

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Derrick Z. Jackson: Trump Throws Red Meat to His Base (and Everyone Else)

Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s new dietary guidelines promoting saturated fats is a recipe for disaster

February 2, 2026 · 2 Comments

Video: Bruce Springsteen | Streets Of Minneapolis 

This is the song heard round the world.

February 1, 2026 · 14 Comments

James Crews: The Slightest Kindness

We were walking the icy streets,
talking about the ways our country
has betrayed us again—promises
unkept, laws broken beyond repair.

January 31, 2026 · 20 Comments

Video: Maneuvers

“Maneuvers (Manöver)” is an experimental animation combining skiing with stop-motion animation.

January 31, 2026 · 6 Comments

Michael T. Young | The Secular Sublime: An Appreciation of Gerald Stern

Stern’s poems are deceptively simple. He writes in a language completely devoid of pretense and yet dignified with the elegance of profound meditation.

January 30, 2026 · 18 Comments

Andrea Mazzarino: The United States of Consumption

Our Trash and Our Lives, Here and Abroad

January 29, 2026 · 4 Comments

Edison Jennings: One of Many Melodious Songs

An ivy educated American male,
bespoke suited but modest and sincere,
once seated and lighted to good effect
and confident of his look and manner
will, when gently prodded, confess

January 29, 2026 · 9 Comments

Chris Walker: Immigrant Children Lead Uprising at Texas Detention Center 

An uprising broke out at an immigrant jail in southern Texas on Saturday, with around 1,000 immigrants detained in the facility — many of them children — chanting “Libertad” and “Let us go,”

January 28, 2026 · 8 Comments

Alison Hurwitz: On Resilience

In 8th grade English class my son’s assigned
a sonnet, asked to find an image, select
one metaphor that can expand to bind
disparate thoughts together.

January 28, 2026 · 38 Comments

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