Abby Zimet: Moron, Fascist, COVID, Doomed, Help
“It sort of is curious, a man works for us, and yet they’re highly thought of, and nobody likes me,” Trump said. “It can only be my personality.” Yes. Yes, it is
Gary Margolis: I was Living in a Poem
Lines so plain I didn’t know, at first,
I was living in a poem.
Abby Zimet: Then They Came For the Drummers, Chanters, Chalk Artists, Trash Pickers, Balloon Carriers, Bike-Helmeted Moms and Naked Athena
We now have the grossly under-reported spectacle of unnamed, unbadged, unaccountable hoodlums in camo combat gear and unmarked vans wildly tear-gassing and pepper-balling engaged citizens, city officials, medics, media…
Joan E. Bauer: Get Your Kicks
This August my niece Holly will drive
the Mother Road. She’s a writer & I say:
Don’t miss anything: not cornfields, chili fries,
maple syrup farms, not the Big Texan
Steak House in dusty Amarillo…
Deesha Philyaw: I Am Not My Ancestors
‘Just don’t try and make a world out of a man, especially a man who’ll still be a boy when you a full-grown woman.’
Jose Padua: Reflections on a Lesson that Would Soon Be Made More Clear to Me by Gil Scott-Heron
In 1971 I’m
thirteen years old
watching a big
Vietnam war protest
on television
Doug Anderson: The Dictator
He built a wall around himself and demanded
that his image be painted on the inside of the wall
looking back so he could imagine the shouts
on the outside were cheers for him
Video: Wavy Gravy & Ace of Cups | “Basic Human Needs”
And wouldn’t it be neat if the people that you meet had shoes upon their feet
And something to eat
And wouldn’t it be fine, now if all of human kind had shelter
Robert Wrigley: The Consciousness of Everything
That time’s lost now, when a stone could hurt,
when a feather missed its wing,
when sky kissed clouds and grass kissed dirt
and nothing thought itself just a thing.
Video: Liberal Redneck | Progress in Rural America
There’s votes to be had, ya’ll.
Michael Simms: Ten things I should have figured out before now
Love is complicated. Courtesy is simple. Start with courtesy.
Elinor Wylie: Castilian
He washed his face in water cold,
His hands in turpentine;
He squeezed out colour like coins of gold
And colour like drops of wine.
David Huddle: Parable of My Family’s Artistic Impulses
My father, affectionately known
by his sons as Doodles, took up painting-by-the-numbers.
His vision of blue jays hung over the toilet to be
reckoned with by any urinating male.
Jose Padua: Days of Being Wild
in the late middle
of my mortal days on earth
I am still wild in the heart
