Linda Belans: The mirror doesn’t lie
Do I look fat
in this outrage?
puffed up?
Frank Lehner: Mrs. Nussbaum’s Monkey
Pops never said much, but there he was in his T-shirt and loose boxers telling Jessers about the Easter Tuesday night he lost his mother and taking the streetcar to go to work because there was nothing to do until the next day, and the plant owner only gave two days off for deaths.
Video: The Tunnel
Three refugees run the race of their lives from Calais to Dover through the Euro Tunnel, trying to beat the trains and overcome their terror in a bid to reach freedom and start new lives in the UK. Based on true accounts.
Cesare Pavese: Displaced People
Suppose tomorrow, bright and early, we took a trip
to my hills. We could stroll through the vineyards and, maybe,
meet with a couple of girls, dark brown, ripened by the sun,
we could start a conversation and sample some of their grapes.
Abby Zimet: Untethered to the Facts
Two months ago, the United States made the Human Rights Watch list for the first time; rights advocates cited a nation “sliding deeper into the quicksands of authoritarianism” with peaceful protests met with military force, critics treated as criminals, journalists targeted, and support slashed for civil society.
David Kirby: In Praise of Chaos
Picasso says, Inspiration exists but it
has to find us working. The more you work,
the more mistakes you make. If you make
enough of them, it’s considered your style.
Michael Simms: Baron Wormser (February 15, 1948 – October 7, 2025)
Although history will have the final word on who among us is read by future generations, I’ll put my money on Baron. His writing represents the best of the American spirit.
Laure-Anne Bosselaar: Ode to Sungolds
Sungolds, coughed my old neighbor, a bird
shat the seed.
Adam Patric Miller: A Chill in American Classrooms
I’m trying to be a good teacher, listening carefully to my students so I can make the ten-thousand micro-adjustments in what I’m presenting to them so they will feel how much I really want them to learn.
Carine Topal: The Terrible Years
Our son sits on a yellow bench bloodied
in the square, waving to a soldier. It is to you he says goodbye.
Now we must pack our bag of bread, head to toe in soot,
ready to eat anything.
David Lauterstein: Lulav
I am a Jew. I am ashamed of those wanting to kill.
The people of Gaza shake their own bodies
in six directions, with nowhere to go,
their only harvest, soil.
Chard deNiord: Patience Is The Tinder
a silence in which you hear
in the midst of the noise all around you
a voice that speaks inside the ear
inside your ear that depends
on silence for writing it down
George Yancy: Trump’s Education Plan Seeks to Make Cruel Domination Into “Common Sense”
Control the curriculum and you control the range of ideas that people are exposed to. This is why schooling is inherently political.
Hayden Saunier: Augury, 2025
Seven black starlings
settle in the sycamore’s bony crown
like an idea taking shape
or a sign we once knew how to read.
