Barbara Hamby: Ode to Knots, Noise, Waking Up at Three, and Falling Asleep Reading to My Id
Why does everything seems so impossible
in the middle of the night? I wake up at three
with my mind in a knot
Assassination attempt on Trump in Western Pennsylvania
A gunman opened fire at former President Donald Trump at a Pennsylvania rally Saturday, injuring him and causing him to be rushed offstage in a dramatic scene just days before he’s set to be nominated as the Republican presidential nominee.
Laure-Anne Bosselaar: The Worlds in this World
Elsewhere, somewhere, a tide recedes,
incense is lit, an infant sucks from a nipple,
a grenade shrieks, a man buys his first cane.
Angele Ellis: “I lived in the dark” | In Grace Notes, Naomi Shihab Nye finds the music in poems about families and the incidents and accidents of personal history
All poetry begins in song, as Naomi Shihab Nye reminds the reader, starting with the title of her latest collection, 117 mostly brief free verse poems that like songs, are both accessible and mysterious.
Patricia Nugent: No Time for Memes
There is a current meme imploring us not to lose friends over politics. This is becoming impossible for me. I would not have been able to continue a friendship with someone who began wearing a swastika armband in the late 1930s.
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer: Meadow
As if, with open palms,
I could pull this beauty
inside me and carry it with me
until I give it to you—
Margo Berdeshevsky: God Bless the Child That’s Got His Own
He says — you will let go he will let go the branch when he is
Ready I nod, yes, he says, climbing the hill from the sea
Where he has gone to wash distance and salt before it comes
Michael Simms: Politics as a Spiritual Practice
Those of us who wish to follow a spiritual path cannot ignore the malevolent policies of our government.
Naomi Shihab Nye: Before I Was A Gazan
I was a boy
and my homework was missing,
paper with numbers on it,
stacked and lined
Barbara Hamby: How to Pray
Falling down on your knees is the easy part, like drinking
a glass of cold water on a hot day, the parched straw
of your throat flooded, your knees hitting the ground,
a prizefighter in the final rounds.
David Kirby: That Happened Sometimes
Frank’s grandmother
and great-grandmother would cook pounds
and pounds of pasta al pomodoro every week
and bring it to the Italian prisoners of war
at Camp Belle Mead, New Jersey.
Sean Sexton: Angelic
I see how it is with them, left to their own pursuits
in our absence: the forgotten gate merely ajar
between the two pastures, kept that way for days
Jason Irwin: A Slice of the American Dream
After my parents’ divorce was made official and my mother was forced to return to the workforce, we suddenly were labeled low-income.
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer: Self-Portrait as Tuning Fork
and you quiver
as if struck by the great hand
of what is true
