Matthew J. Parker: How Courage, Kindness, and Creative Iconoclasm Can Counter the Tramp of Fascist Feet
I’m alarmed by this new wave of attacks on our institutions.
Betsy Sholl: Haibun | Tarantula
Our creature, named Slash, also bulked up. He had a taste for crickets we fed each week…
Ghada Abu Muaileq: In Gaza, Even the Cost of a Grave Has Become a Luxury
We tear up chairs for firewood. Soap is watered down to make it last. Basic necessities are increasingly out of reach.
Moudi Sbeity: Something Rather Than Nothing
What can be more holy than this?
The ground beneath our feet,
the stories we carry from one day to the next,
the fluency of rivers as a reminder of something
rather than nothing.
Baron Wormser: Distressed
Since grade school when I was hunched under my desk during an air-raid drill, I have been distressed by the specter of the atomic bomb.
Eleanor Lerman: Monday, Tuesday
Aqueous lunar days when the sky was plowed
with stars, days of desire in the dance clubs,
days of luster, days of pearl—when was the last time
you remember our days of paradise? The days
before the demon days of pretty things ran out?
Julia Margaret Cameron: Photograph of Julia Jackson (1867)
This poetic image depicts the woman who was the model for the beautiful Mrs. Ramsay in “To the Lighthouse”, Virginia Woolf’s great novel of 1927.
Wallace Stevens: Sunday Morning
Divinity must live within herself:
Passions of rain, or moods in falling snow;
Grievings in loneliness, or unsubdued
Elations when the forest blooms; gusty
Emotions on wet roads on autumn nights
Alexis Rhone Fancher: Three Pantoums for My Sister
Enough already! My sister says..
I can’t bear to watch you anymore.
I know she’s right. But I can’t stop.
I mean where would I put my sorrow?
Video: Side Hustle
Interweaving fiction with documentary testimony of sugar babies and sex workers, Side Hustle follows a young dancer making rent with the financial support of her sugar daddy.
Mike Schneider: Appreciating Charles Simic (1938-2023)
In the distance our great leader
Crowed like a rooster from a balcony,
Or was it a great actor
Impersonating our great leader?
John Guzlowski: Hunger
He ate what would kill a man
in the normal course of his life:
leather buttons, cloth caps, anything
small enough to get into his mouth.
He ate roots. He ate newspaper.
Perin Gürel: What an old folktale can teach us about the ‘annoying persistence’ of political comedians
Donald Trump’s gleeful response to the show’s cancellation, and his suggestion that others will be “next up,” shows just how seriously some political figures take comedic critique.
Ma Yongbo: Three poems translated from Chinese
The horse drawn cart hasn’t gone far, it will carry away
the love of the land, and one or two shy grasshoppers.
At this moment, her hanging sickle
reflects the white light of winter arising in the distance.
