Molly Fisk: Early
Small towns at daybreak are so nostalgic:
the only thing missing’s a train whistle.
Good morning, America. Mercenaries
in Portland last night teargassed a wall
of mothers. How long will we remember?
Baron Wormser: The Fury
Politics requires suppleness, the ability to compromise, to fit means to ends, to temper principles for the sake of reaching agreement, to turn burning moral issues into administrative questions, to convert moral enemies into amiable opponents, the duel into a debate.
Michael T. Young: Two Poems
It begins not in the trees exactly
but in what they do to the light
Alexis Rhone Fancher: Kate’s Pantoum
My best friend shows up two days post mortem.
Her soul not yet departed, she sits on my bed.
The mattress gives with her weight; I feel her shadow.
When I reach for her, she’s gone.
José A. Alcántara: To a Friend Who Does Not Believe in God
from the first chord
on the guitar, her body stilled, her face went slack.
For two minutes, she went somewhere else,
somewhere quiet, beautiful, free of pain.
Vegan Kitchen: Southwest Kale Salad with Cumin-Tomato Dressing
Here’s a great tasting salad rich in antioxidants, protein and fiber. I serve this dish with a hearty bread and plant-based butter or nut spread.
Naomi Shihab Nye: Trying to Name What Doesn’t Change
Every Tuesday on Morales Street
butchers crack the necks of a hundred hens.
The widow in the tilted house
spices her soup with cinnamon.
Ask her what doesn’t change.
Byron Hoot: To Life
The restlessness
of age has entered me. That longing for more
knowing there’s only less to take in.
Patricia Jabbeh Wesley: Cleaning Lady
The war had already overrun the entire country of Liberia even as we awaited our evacuation in March of 1991. Charles Taylor was making his on and off comeback to kidnap residents in the city suburbs, And missiles were still landing in our backyard soon after the ceasefire agreement.
Barbara Crooker: Stillbirth
Dear Supreme Court Injustices,
you who are so proud of overturning
Roe vs. Wade. Do you have any idea
what it’s like to lose a child, a wanted child,
one who never got to use her pink lungs,
take in this sweet air?
Sean Sexton: Fool’s Day
Was it they’d mostly finished their work,
how the bulls came along this morning, let
themselves be driven back to their pasture
still in ruin with holes dug from last year’s
nine-month layoff?
Patricia A. Nugent: Scenes from a Tesla Takedown
When I first heard about it, I knew I’d go. I’ve been showing up for more than fifty years, starting with the Vietnam war.
Baron Wormser: Dissident
Of necessity, the path of the dissident, since it depends on the exactions of conscience, is a solitary one. I think of Henry David Thoreau’s night in a jail … Continue reading
Rachel Hadas: Three Poems
Wait. Something I had never thought to see
again clanks forward from obscurity-
that creaky train I’d once been riding on,
a journey slow and grim.
