Carol Moldaw: Arthritis
“Save your hands,” my mother says,
seeing me untwist a jar’s tight cap—
just the way she used to tell me
not to let boys fool around
Charles Harper Webb: Department of Discontent
The officer in charge checks my ID. “Formal
or informal complaint?” she says. When I hesitate,
she says, “Informal’s more relaxed. You speak
more softly, don’t raise your blood pressure,
can wear jeans, no tie, use contractions and slang.
Stephen Prager: Hours After US Citizen Shot Dead by ICE, JD Vance Said ‘Door-to-Door’ Operations Are Coming
“This is starting to look disturbingly like Germany in the 1930s.”
Rachel Trousdale & Charles W. Brice: Two Elegies for Renée Nicole Good
I think of long dead Germans caught in the Bardo.
Are they wagging their fingers at us?
Now you know what it felt like, they say
Chris Hedges: Grand Illusion
All empires, when they are dying, worship the idol of war. War will save the empire. War will resurrect past glory. War will teach an unruly world to obey.
Penelope Moffet: Peace March
Carry your light out into the shitstorm,
Joan Baez writes, and what a swirl of turds
it is.
Louise Bogan: Cassandra
And madness chooses out my voice again,
Again. I am the chosen no hand saves…
Ron Smith: Cassandra
I called my friend, the journalist, right after
The vote was known. “You don’t understand.”
He told me, “This is reporter’s gold”—with laughter
To show contempt of the clown and his band
Of misfits and morons
Announcing Zoom Launch for Baron Wormser’s new poetry collection!
Sign up for the Zoom book launch on Tuesday, January 13, 2026, (8 pm EST). We’ll be reading from James Baldwin Smoking a Cigarette.
Sally Bliumis-Dunn: The Cypress and the Stag
Now it all makes sense:
the roots of the cypress tree
to hold the boy’s sorrow in place
Karen J. Greenberg: Trump’s War on Women
Bodies, Roles, and Futures at Risk
Cesare Pavese: Landscape II
Starlight on the hill: the fields shine white and clear.
Up there, you couldn’t miss the thieves. Down here, in these ravines,
the vineyard is all darkness.
Abby Zimet: Gobsmacking Fabulists ‘R Us
For the anniversary of the Jan. 6 riot that almost toppled democracy (more quickly than now), the hacks and crackpots in power have concocted a deranged revisionist history.
Audio: Danez Smith reads “not an elegy for Mike Brown”
I am sick of writing this poem
but bring the boy. his new name
his same old body. ordinary, black
dead thing. bring him & we will mourn
