Vox Populi

A curated webspace for Poetry, Politics, and Nature with over 6,000,000 visitors since 2014 and over 9,000 archived posts.

Desne A. Crossley: A Wallflower and Her Mother

Clueless about west coast Whiteness, for sure. For my anxious mother, this meant I needed her singular brand of watchful encouragement to grow into a whole person, a whole woman—and to be taught some street smarts for life in suburban Palo Alto with its unfamiliar patterns and pitfalls.

June 27, 2025 · 14 Comments

Cesare Pavese: Ancestors

I found out I had lived, before I was born,
in hard, sturdy, independent men, their own masters.
None of them knew what to say, so they just kept quiet.

June 27, 2025 · 7 Comments

Rebecca Gordon: How Will Your Data Be Deployed

In an Age of Dark Enlightenment?

June 26, 2025 · 7 Comments

Kim Stafford: Four Poems

Her text says the bombing is getting
closer. She dozes, there’s a blast, a rattle
of debris falling somewhere near. She says
every bomb makes an earthquake. Her heart
stops. She says the forces are getting closer.

June 26, 2025 · 8 Comments

Henry A. Giroux: From the Streets of LA to the National Stage, The Left Must Win the Cultural War

Trump’s war on dissent can only be defeated by a left that challenges the values sustaining authoritarianism.

June 25, 2025 · 3 Comments

Alice Friman: The Nick Poems

Do you know what you’re doing?
and she said yes
though deep in her virginity
she knew nothing
but what she wanted

June 25, 2025 · 15 Comments

Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove: Americans Don’t Want Trump’s Illegal War on Iran

Trump has dragged the United States into another unnecessary war because his “America First” agenda is failing at home. He is using big bombs like a little man.

June 24, 2025 · 3 Comments

Emilie Lygren: With and Without

Hunger ––
I can’t hear the word
without my mind swinging to Gaza.

June 24, 2025 · 5 Comments

Kahlil Gibran: War

One night a feast was held in the palace, and there came a man and prostrated himself before the prince, and all the feasters looked upon him; and they saw that one of his eyes was out and that the empty socket bled.

June 23, 2025 · 8 Comments

Watson Institute, Brown University: US military aid to Israel

This report includes the $17.9 billion the U.S. government has approved for Israeli military operations in Gaza from 10/7/23 to 12/31/24.

June 23, 2025 · Leave a comment

Elena Novak: 50 years after the Vietnam War, the legacy of nonviolent resistance lives on

At the 50th anniversary celebration of the end of the Vietnam War in Ho Chi Minh City, U.S. antiwar activists drew lessons for stopping the war on Gaza. 

June 22, 2025 · 2 Comments

Robert Cording: An Unasked for Inauguration Prayer, 2025

Lord of the light that reveals
how we have failed and failed again
the one requirement asked of us—
to love one another.

June 22, 2025 · 10 Comments

Majid Naficy: A Song for Peace

Let me compose a song for peace
Beyond your phony epics.

June 21, 2025 · 9 Comments

Sandy Solomon: Widow

Now the mockingbird at the mulberry
and its mate on the fence pretend they’re crows
and their caws contend with the noise in my bones

June 21, 2025 · 14 Comments

Archives