Luray Gross: Small Fists Knocking
Is a poem a teaspoon of salt in the ocean,
one grain of sand placed carefully
on a turret of the castle
just before the wave rushes in?
Christine Gelineau: Artificial Intelligence
It was Kristallnacht that motivated
my mother-in-law’s parents
to put her and her younger sister
on the Kindertransport train
to England
Robert Cording: Dome Houses
When erected, the domes must have looked
like something built to colonize Mars.
Fred Everett Maus: Growing Up
Until I left for college, I lived in the same home with my mom and dad. The house was built in 1924. My grandfather was the first owner.
Beth Copeland: Second Wife
Fifteen years ago I drove south to see you as trees broke
into bloom—redbuds, pears, dogwoods—and my heart
unfolded like a bud closed too long in the cold.
Edward J. Curtin Jr: A Luminous Tapestry of Truth
The martyred heroes’ tales recounted in this book are sorely needed now when the survival of our planet is at stake.
Edna St. Vincent Millay: Say what you will, and scratch my heart to find
Laugh at the unshed leaf, say what you will,
Call me in all things what I was before,
A flutterer in the wind, a woman still;
I tell you I am what I was and more.
Patricia A. Nugent: The Opposite of Love
“You are abnormally nervy,” he texted. Since it didn’t exactly read like a compliment, his words caused me to reflect on how my activism may be perceived.
Gary Margolis: Overlooking the Sea
Who wouldn’t want
to be led back to their century,
their tent, their house of stones?
Their window, overlooking the sea.
Sharon Zhang: Zohran Mamdani Wins Decisive Victory in NYC, Triumphing Over Billionaire Onslaught
Mamdani’s win is a historic victory for the left over a powerful, moneyed coalition of forces that aimed to defeat him.
Joan E. Bauer: Lovers and Other Strangers
We’re all strangers. But after a while,
you get used to it. You become deeper
strangers. That’s a sort of love.
Rebecca Gordon: Strategic Incompetence in the Age of Trump
We now live in a country that’s being run both with bad intent, and unintentionally badly.
Walt Whitman: I Hear America Singing
The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench, the hatter singing as he stands,
The wood-cutter’s song, the ploughboy’s on his way in the morning, or at noon intermission or at sundown…
Adam Patric Miller: The Sound of a Teacher’s Silence
As a person of Jewish heritage I can’t be silent about a genocide. Jews aren’t the only people who’ve been threatened with annihilation.
