Bernardine Watson: Freedom
the colored hotel was named for Crispus Attucks
a runaway slave, and the first man to die
for the America dream
Michael Simms: The Summer You Learned to Swim
The summer you learned to swim
was the summer I learned to be at peace with myself.
Derrick Z. Jackson: US Supreme Court Guts Wetlands Protections
Samuel Alito and his majority are further disconnecting our nation from the science that could help us heal the planet.
David Hassler: Vocata George
My clamped jaw, in its extreme symptoms, is like a fire door, a castle gate that has slammed shut.
Michael Simms: Strangers at the Door | Robert Gibb, Laure-Anne Bosselaar and Jose Padua
Here I want to call attention to three mature poets who have done extraordinary work, but have not, in my opinion, received the attention they deserve, and in the process explore different ways one can be an “outsider” in the poetry field.
Barbara Crooker: In the Middle
Each day, we must learn
again how to love, between morning’s quick coffee
and evening’s slow return.
Baron Wormser: The Weight
Desperate for an assertive American task, people will grasp at some very wretched straws.
Sappho: Fragments, on Love and Desire
Like the sweet-apple reddening high on the branch,
High on the highest, the apple-pickers forgot,
Or not forgotten, but one they couldn’t reach…
Connie Post: Estrangement
you watch a burning city
from far away
and notice a pigeon flying towards you
gaining speed
pulling the sky’s edges with it
Laure-Anne Bosselaar: At the end of the Breakwater
Let the day open so wholly
to light.
Dawn Potter: Late April
Ghosts shimmered on the broken doorstep,
rising through dust to become my own new skin
Barbara Hamby: Ode to American English
no one uses
the King James anymore, only plain-speak versions,
in which Jesus, raising Lazarus from the dead, says,
“Dude, wake up,” and the L-man bolts up like a B-movie
mummy. “Whoa, I was toasted.”
Michael Simms: Orpheus in Hollywood
Michael Chabon hasn’t so much straddled genres as rejuvenated whatever he touches, making literary fiction more engaging and accessible and popular genres less cliched and formulaic.
Charles Bukowski: so you want to be a writer?
unless it comes unasked out of your
heart and your mind and your mouth
and your gut,
don’t do it.
