William Trowbridge: Polio Days
July of 1949 was especially hot in Omaha, but the polio epidemic got most of the news coverage. Across the country, hospitals were filling up.
Steven Ratiner: Fathering
After the stroke, when language
froze over in his throat, he had a hard time
with the snow–– He couldn’t say,
and the sky wouldn’t stop saying
Barbara Hamby: Mockingbird on the Buddha
The mockingbird on the Buddha says, Where’s my seed,
you Jezebel, where’s the sunshine in my blue sky,
where’s the Hittite princess, Pharaoh’s temple, where’s the rain
for the misery I love so much?
Michael Simms: Ecstasy & Envy
Someone offered me Ecstasy
And I wondered what they had in mind.
Perhaps lying on a beach on the island
Of Antigua, the sun on my skin, a red sail
In the distance soon to arrive?
Chana Bloch: Memento Mori
Unblessed in a downburst, I lost
my leafy summer, my lovely,
my crest, my crown.
Sydney Lea: Before the Operation
The surgeon assures my wife and me:
“a little scrape, then zip! Home-free.”
How did age come on with so little warning?
I woke up in tears early this morning,
then put on an album by the great Art Blakey.
Ta’Kyla Bates: Red states are about to go hungry thanks to Trump
GOP lawmakers are taking food out of the mouths of kids — including their own constituents — to put toward tax cuts for billionaires.
Matthew J. Parker: The Continuing Fallacy of Our Word Salad Sandwiches
I shot up heroin for 25 years and never had a problem. I shot up fentanyl once and it almost killed me.
Barbara Crooker: This Summer Day
We are still ripening
into our bodies, still in the act of becoming.
Rejoice in the day’s long sugar.
Praise that big fat tomato of a sun.
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer: Letter to the Others in the Dark
I am writing not to send you light,
but to let you know you are not alone
in the darkness. I am here, too,
scribbling with no sight, no certainty
Ryan Eckes: memo for labor
you cannot separate the job from the house from the rent from the earth from the food from the healthcare from the water from the transit from the war from … Continue reading
Shaheen Dil: From Letters to my Younger Self
Today my three-card spread says there’s a Twinkie in my future again
Video: A Swim Lesson
An ode to an everyday hero: Bill Marsh, a swim teacher who helps children manage their fears and discover their own power when submerged in an overwhelming unknown.
Michael Simms: All Time Most Popular Posts in Vox Populi (2014-2025)
Vox Populi was founded on April 1, 2014 when Nisha Gupta and I met for coffee and decided to start a website to support the anti-fracking activists in Western Pennsylvania.
