Dorianne Laux: Spirit Level
I see how my whole life has been a dream,
one she built for me from the ground up,
her daughter, my mother the axe, beautiful
tool with which she shaped me, a house
much like the one she lived in, but smaller
Mike Vargo: Language Is a Virus
A punishment for the arrogance of thinking my mission in life was to explain things to people.
Desne A. Crossley: Alzheimer’s and Missing Love (2015-2017, 1996 & 1950)
Watched the movie Hidden Figures (when the first black women worked in the Nasa space program) and almost cried. My father was a rocket scientist, something I didn’t realize until his brain was already gone to Alzheimer’s.
Kurt Brown: A Moment
You stood before me, brushing your long hair,
stroke after stroke in the astonished air
while you talked of nothing, and I sipped my drink.
Delmore Schwartz: O Love, Sweet Animal
O Love, dark animal,
With your strangeness go
Like any freak or clown:
Appease the child in her
Because she is alone
Adrie Kusserow: Anthropocene Lullaby
Don’t tell me you didn’t get a bit edgy,
when capitalism tossed its blonde hair cockily aside,
its profit settling like plastic on the ocean’s floor.
Rashida James-Saadiya: Anti-ICE Organizing Is Creating Counter-Institutions Based on Care
The task now is not to burn brighter or faster, but to build the collective capacity to withstand what’s coming.
Rebecca Gordon: On Seeking Asylum and Refuge
In a Hostile United States
Tony Gloeggler: Bridges (1994)
…he stops in front of you,
extends his hand and says,
“Satch Paige is my name.”
Woody Lewis: Sally Hemings and the Road to Curdsville
I have memories of the apartheid signs on all the restaurants and public facilities. A white person who grew up in the area at that time recently corrected me: “Those weren’t apartheid signs, those were Jim Crow signs.”
Catherine Gonick: Gazing at a Model of Australopithecus
She might have clung to her freedom
to live among leaves a while longer,
in paradise not quite lost.
Theia Chatelle: Indigenous-Led Collectives Are Keeping Minnesotan Communities Safe From ICE
Members of the American Indian Movement and the Many Shields Warrior Society are patrolling the streets of Minneapolis.
Ma Yongbo: Three poems for Helen Pletts in English & Chinese
No one can walk here,
save shy deer, save wind and rain,
save those invisible wings
that can gently lift the whole garden
up to the constellations.
Diego Ramos: Academic Freedom | Trump’s University Blackmail Results
Universities in 2025 proved that the federal government can indeed blackmail academic institutions by withholding federal funds and forcing schools not only to give money to the government but also fundamentally alter the way their campuses operate.
Laure-Anne Bosselaar: Lassitude
the stars barely visible above the oil rigs off the coast,
aglow like phantom ships
