T. R. Hummer: Think
It’s impossible sometimes to make your way
through the undergrowth—think of Desoto,
Think of Cabeza de Vaca hacking down briars
Video: The Opposites Game
An English teacher asks his class: ‘What’s the opposite of a gun?’
Stephen Dobyns: Can Poetry Matter?
Heart feels the time has come to compose lyric poetry.
No more storytelling for him. Oh, Moon, Heart writes,
sad wafer of the heart’s distress. And then: Oh, Moon,
bright cracker of the heart’s pleasure.
Abby Zimet: Concerned Collins Calls Cops On Constituents Committing Communist Chalk Crimes
Susan ‘Snowflake’ Collins was so troubled by chalk-wielding desperados who hate-crimed the (public) sidewalk outside her house by (politely) asking she protect the rights of those women that she called the cops on them – this, while her party of neo-fascists and Christian zealots works tirelessly to drag us all back to the 1300s…
Jose Padua: Puñeta
Mother, you were the history
that never made the books,
the woman who fed us
chicken flavored with garlic
and ginger, sweet pork with
soy sauce and rice
Richard St. John: The Tao to Disneyland 
Disneyland at last: The draw-bridged entry! Monorail!
Tom Sawyer’s cave. Gators on the Jungle Cruise. Natives
passing in canoes. Snack-bar at the Matterhorn.
Wendy Cope: The Waste Land
A Phoenician named Phlebas forgot
About birds and his business–the lot,
Which is no surprise,
Since he’d met his demise
And been left in the ocean to rot.
Abby Zimet: What In the Ever-Loving Gay Fever Dream? Tucker Carlson Is Worried About the End of (Mostly Naked) Men
Boldly aiming his furrowed brow at “one of the biggest stories of our lifetimes,” perennially puzzled, flagrantly fascistic Tucker Carlson has released the hottest, weirdest, gayest trailer ever for his new season … Continue reading
Carolyn Holmes Gregory: The Body
You know you are not in charge
of your body any more
despite its joyous odes
and incantations.
Dawn Potter: Now that I’m old
now that I don’t have sex every night or carry two fat boys,
one on each hip, up small mountains,
I have to go to exercise class
Meg Pokrass: Traveling Companion
The ratio of sad men to happy men was tilting toward sad. Single men were sad and claimed to not be attracted to people anymore. They changed their names and dyed their hair. They had dead cats. She was getting used to it.
Sean Connolly: Invasion
The low winter sun streaks through the streets and the dry hedges and barren trees shed a maroon dust. The birds go batty in Appalachia, celebrating an early spring, and … Continue reading
Richard Hoffman: Summer Job
“The trouble with intellectuals,” Manny, my boss,
once told me, “is that they don’t know nothing
till they can explain it to themselves.
Vox Populi 