Jefferson Carter: Cat & Transient
I swore I’d stop writing about liberal guilt
& about cats too, but I must confess
last night, I groomed our little black cat
with my tongue
Dawn Potter: Heat Wave
a squirrel is hurling insults, and beneath his screeches the cicadas
insist and sigh, insist and sigh, unmoved by his grandiloquent snit.
Jose Padua: In Proclamation to the Emperors of Agony
Seeing an audience in Central Park holding up their middle fingers in unison is one of my fondest memories—even though I wasn’t among those for whom the finger was intended.
Abby Zimet: Banksy’s Most Excellent Spraycation
“A wall is a very big weapon,” Banksy says. “It’s one of the nastiest things you can hit someone with.”
Michael Gregory: This is your mind as green slime mold
mingling molecules and attitudes
sinews and desires platitudes and functions
nervous circuits and circadian rhythms pure crap
and masterful conceptions
Audio: Gregory Corso reads his poem “Marriage”
Beat generation poet Gregory Corso reads his classic poem “Marriage” from his book, The Happy Birthday of Death, first published in 1960.
Abby Zimet: Those Pesky Socialists Claiming There’s Anybody Here But White Men
The supposed dangers of truth-telling about history, even when we aren’t the good guys, is bedrock right-wing rubbish, because of course the truth can be a pain and then you have to learn, change, do better and ewww, who wants to do that?
Meg Pokrass: Moments with Crochet Hooks
Back then she and her mother waited for the phone to ring, for money to plump itself up and walk through their door. Moments passed with yarn and crochet hooks.
Rick Campbell: Another List of Things I Have Attended to Sloppily
The garden gates, once my pride, now
slanted, ajar, hinges rusted and failing.
The rails of Della’s tree house
that somehow escaped their nails.
Michael Simms: Only You
I woke this morning remembering the room we had in Paris which looked out on the Seine.
Abby Zimet: Planet Earth To Outer Space, When Bezos Blasts Off, Please Keep Him There
With enough money to end world hunger or curb climate change or house the homeless but evidently little will to do so, the founder of the dystopian empire of Amazon and the world’s second-richest man with an estimated $186 billion is instead taking an insouciant space ride…
Molly Fisk: Phil, Who Loved the Giants
The bra I took off at 4:45 through the sleeve of my dress
and put down somewhere I find on my grandmother’s hutch
in the kitchen, incongruous, surrounded by jars of jam
Jose Padua: Head Over Heels
At the doctor’s office in Charlottesville, Virginia
to investigate the possible reasons
for my ten-month-old son’s large head,
the doctor measures my own
and informs me that my head size
is off the curve, off the charts
Molly Fisk: You and I
the whole country snarled into such a hot mess
you wouldn’t recognize democracy if she
removed her skirts and danced on your lap for free,
pretending to like you.
