Naomi Shihab Nye: To Netanyahu
My Palestinian father named his donkey after you…
Now I think he insulted the donkey.
Christine Skarbek: Oh, Poland!
My buddy Yolanta invited me over to Park Café to listen to this wizard on the piano, a 17-yr old skinny fellow. I cannot tell you how thin this character was or, for that matter, how long and tapered his fingers and what a master he was at the ivories.
Video: La Madre Buena (The Good Mother)
A Mexican mother torn between her politics and pleasing her only son’s request – to have a Donald Trump piñata for his birthday party.
Miriam Levine: On the Steps of the Miami Beach Cinematheque
Soon I’d be eighty. My hip ached,
the thumb he kissed bent with arthritis.
His scent was lime, and the nape
of his neck smooth as summer jade.
Jose Padua: It Was the Summer After the Summer of Love
it’s the first time in my life
that I’ve ever had an image
or maybe it just an idea
(which was still bad enough)
of my parents doing it,
having sex, grabbing each other
Abby Zimet: Never Again. Still. Really.
“When Jews say never again,” said one marcher, “We fucking mean it.”
David Huddle: The Watermelon Sutras
In the act of eating watermelon no one
ever pulled a trigger, spoke harshly
to a child, swatted a butterfly out
of the sky, or told a lie for money.
Abby Zimet: Unwanted Ivanka — Daddy Will You Buy Me A Pony or Country?
Confronted by such absurd kleptocracy, Twitter, as is its wont, got sweet revenge.
Molly Fisk: The Fox Laughs at the Hounds
voices chorusing woods and fields, ringing
off the stone walls she runs beside, light
and fleet, silent as new snow falling through
Meg Pokrass: Puppy Breath
I had his phone number, the guy from the A.A. meeting. I held it in my hands. I was terrible on the phone, but he would never call me. He said he couldn’t approach women. It was up to me.
Video: My Dead Dad’s Porno Tapes
Was my father’s leftover stuff the key to who he really was?
Sandy Solomon: Grammar Lout
Liz thinks we ought to have a day
devoted to apostrophes
In which we add or rub them out
in bands of roving grammar louts.
Cornelius Eady: Charlie Chaplin Impersonates a Poet
Here is the little tramp, standing
On a stack of books in order
To reach the microphone
Meg Pokrass: The Agonizingly Beautiful Noses of Norwegians
Tonight, Albert Albertson took me to a foreign film at the Cinemaclub – a Norwegian film in which ten gorgeous people died. The women had agonizingly beautiful noses. Their deaths were as agonizing as their noses, and it seemed fitting, or at least it fit, and I didn’t feel as sad as I would have felt watching normally attractive people die.
