Barbara Hamby: Ode to Hardware Stores
Where have all the hardware stores gone—dusty, sixty-watt
warrens with wood floors, cracked linoleum,
poured concrete painted blood red?
Video: Let There Be Light (John Huston’s 1946 documentary about PTSD)
The film was intended to educate the public about post-traumatic stress disorder and its treatment among returning veterans, but its unscripted presentation of mental disability caused the U.S. government to suppress the film.
Baruch November: Victor “Young” Perez
The Jewish flyweight from Tunisia—
who modeled himself after the Battling Siki,
a boxer from Senegal—
should have died early in the ring,
Michael Simms: Two Poems Inspired by Sean Sexton
Some people should be allowed to live forever
on the basis of our world’s great need. — Sean Sexton
Lisa M. Hase-Jackson: Post Solstice Academics
my ancestors are
druid tree-dwellers, forest dancers
intimate with boreal communities
and life’s brief promise—
Kenneth A. Carlson: Does Character Still Matter in the Age of Trump?
Democracies with high levels of corruption and low trust in leaders’ integrity are significantly more prone to backsliding toward authoritarianism.
Edna St. Vincent Millay: What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why
What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning; but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply
Sharon Zhang: After Bombing 6 Countries This Year, Netanyahu Pins Israeli Isolation on Muslims
“We’ll need to develop our weapons industry — we’re going to be Athens and super Sparta combined,” Netanyahu said.
Tony Hoagland: Sweet Ruin
Maybe that is what he was after,
my father, when he arranged, ten years ago,
to be discovered in a mobile home
with a woman named Roxanne, an attractive,
recently divorced masseuse.
George Yancy: Authoritarian Wave in US Shows Democracy’s Fragility, South African Scholar Says
Trump’s attacks are buttressed by his commitment to an authoritarian playbook that wallows in weaponizing differences against the backdrop of creating historical myths — in this case about the supremacy of whiteness.
Sally Bliumis-Dunn: That Night
like a cage lit by moon in a darkness held at bay
beyond this room where the loud chandelier
lit us as though on a stage where we act our rawest selves
Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis: Beware Rich Men Quoting the Bible to Punish the Poor
There is never a suggestion, of course, that the rich, who have functionally stolen people’s wages and engorged themselves by denying them healthcare, are in any way to blame.
James Crews: Light and Dark
Half-awake, I lose myself in a pool
of late morning sun and leaf-shadows
flashing on the floor outside my bedroom,
what the Japanese call komorebi—light
and dark held in the same container
of a single moment, as we hold them in us,
Chris Hedges: The Martyrdom of Charlie Kirk
The assassination of Charlie Kirk presages a new, deadly stage in the disintegration of a fractious and highly polarized United States.
