Adam Patric Miller: How (Not) to Wear a Keffiyeh to School
Fold the keffiyeh in a triangle, lift it to your face, lift your arms about your head holding the ends of the longest edge, then wrap it so the triangle covers your face, tie the long ends together behind your head, letting the patterns drape over your shoulders.
Baron Wormser: The Loss of Literature
Literature challenges the very idea of right thinking, which is one reason tyrants have suppressed literature, though that suppression is ably carried out by any zealous group of chiding, censorious know-it-alls.
C.P. Kavafy: Che Fece… Il Gran Rifiuto
For some people the day comes
when they have to declare the great Yes
or the great No.
Robert F. Barsky: Noam Chomsky at 96
The linguist, educator, philosopher and public thinker has had a massive intellectual and moral influence.
Michael Simms: Strange Meadowlark
years later jazz, a free communal experience
embodying love, saved me just as poetry saved me
Andrew Reginald Hairston: Sweet Potato Pie
Having gone public with your bisexuality the month prior — and blocking your parents and sister at the same time — the memories would have to suffice
Daniel Hunter: 10 ways to be prepared and grounded now that Trump has won
It’s important we squarely face Trump’s victory and what there is to do about it.
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer: Why I Stay Up Late Walking
Easier to be the one
who is gathered into
the field of darkness
by night’s great hands
Video: Naomi Shihab Nye reads her poem Gate A-4
I heard an announcement:
“If anyone in the vicinity of Gate A-4 understands any Arabic, please
come to the gate immediately.”
Eva-Maria Simms: The Playbook of Dictatorship Redux
From my family stories and my readings of political philosophy and history, the following picture emerges, which shows the building blocks of a totalitarian dictatorship. I offer it here as a warning from a German immigrant to my fellow citizens in the United States.
Jeffrey Harrison: Stalinesque
We don’t recognize our own country,
and our words don’t carry more than ten feet,
but the snippets that can still be made out
are all about the Emperor Felonius.
Barbara Crooker: Cathedrale Notre-Dame de Paris
Nearly fifty years ago,
in the wreckage of my first marriage, I lit
a tall white taper, prayed that my husband
would return to himself, keep our family intact,
a prayer that disappeared in the dark vaults
James Crews: Two Poems
We keep going back to the rocky beach,
searching for the glint of sea glass
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer: Wilding
I crave it, this scraping away
of everything that isn’t
limb-thrash and lung-gasp
and skin-scream and heart-bang
