Eleanor Lerman: Fiddlestick
Admit nothing tonight: break everything
that can be broken and banished and
let it be known that the heart
is nothing but an old fiddlestick
lying forgotten in the grass
Rabbi Angela Buchdahl: The Cries of Isaac and Ishmael
We can feel brokenhearted for the suffering of the children of Isaac and of Ishmael. We must.
Jordan Smith: Parts of the Same Project,
Awake to a language he didn’t know,
A woman by a window, her silhouette
Between light crossing a meadow
Audio: Son House performing County Farm Blues
Put you under a man called “Captain Jack”
Put you under a man they call “Captain Jack”
He’ll sure write his name up and down your back
Barbara Crooker: Patty’s Charcoal Drive-In
First job. In tight black shorts
and a white bowling shirt, red lipstick
and bouncing ponytail, I present
each overflowing tray as if it were a banquet.
Jessica Corbett: Spain Joins Italy in Sending Ship to Protect Gaza-Bound Sumud Flotilla
The UN special rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territories implored other countries “to mobilize their fleet to grant the flotilla safe sailing to Gaza, and deploy a real humanitarian convoy to break the blockade.”
Jane Mead: Passing a Truck Full of Chickens/at Night on Highway Eighty
I saw the one that made me slow some—
I lingered there beside her for five miles.
Frida Berrigan: Preparing for Scarcity
The truck wheel’s inner tube was right in front of me, no longer half-submerged in the pond’s late summer muck. After so many hot weeks without rain, the water had dried up and the garbage was completely exposed.
Jose Padua: Driving Out of Town on the Day Before What Would Have Been My Mother’s 93rd Birthday
she would have loved the blue and yellow tones of this early evening
Pennsylvania sky as busy as a symphony over the landscape of this small town
so far from Asia
Abby Zimet: Optuse Sexual Predator Approved
In honor of his speech at the UN, wherein he raved, bloviated and browbeat world leaders, patriots have erected a new statue in D.C. of Trump and his “closest friend” Jeffrey Epstein
John Ashbery: A Worldly Country
For night, as usual, knew what it was doing,
providing sleep to offset the great ungluing
that tomorrow again would surely bring.
Michelle Zacarias: In Southern California, Small Groups of Activists Quietly Undermine ICE Operations
Organizers confront ICE wherever they can be found, from the hotels where agents sleep to the streets they patrol.
Ted Kooser: Abandoned Farmhouse
Something went wrong, says the empty house
in the weed-choked yard. Stones in the fields
say he was not a farmer; the still-sealed jars
in the cellar say she left in a nervous haste.
Thom Hartmann: Will US Democracy Survive? This Is a Threshold Moment
The moment is urgent. If we don’t speak up and rise up now, we may not get another chance.
