Paul Laurence Dunbar: Invitation to Love
Come when my heart is full of grief
Or when my heart is merry;
Come with the falling of the leaf
Or with the redd’ning cherry.
Julia Conley: Thousands in Midwestern GOP Districts Attend Sanders’ First Stops on Tour to Fight Oligarchy
“The energy around what Bernie is doing is insane….”
Julie Bruck: Two Poems
Whose earth is this?
It’s borrowed, leases are revocable,
minute to minute. Just ask the man
on a rooftop in Gaza
John Zheng: Poetry as Enchantment by Dana Gioia
“If poetry is the most ancient and primal art, if it is a universal human activity, if it uses the rhythmic power of music to speak to us in deep and mysterious ways, if the art is a sort of secular magic that heightens the sense of our own humanity, then why is poetry so unpopular?”
David Kirby: Inexhaustible
You’ve seen the photo: the marine
on the right straining like the statue
of a Greek wrestler as he hauls the flag
into place, the five on the left pushing
from their side.
Amal Ahmed: Rebuilding Food Security After a Wildfire
A coalition in Oregon is fighting to expand access to food assistance—regardless of immigration status.
George Yancy: Black History Testifies to the Impossible Creative Power of Black Resistance
Literary scholar Farah Jasmine Griffin discusses how Black yearning keeps surviving in the face of racist violence.
Baron Wormser: Salvation
On Flannery O’Connor, Donald Trump, and American Violence
William D. Hartung: In Stunningly Bright Colors
Enrico Muratore Aprosio’s Cry for Common Sense and Common Humanity,
Larry Levis: The Map
You were bent over the sink, washing your stockings.
I came up behind you like the night sky behind the town.
You stood frowning at your knuckles
And did not speak.
Abby Zimet: For Cruel, Stupid, Dastardly Deeds Done and Proposed
Gandhi famously said, “Civil disobedience therefore becomes a sacred duty when the State has become lawless.”
Helge Torvund: The Hand
This poem contains
all the poems I have felt
moving inside me
but never wrote down
Erica Frantz, et al: Firing civil servants and dismantling government departments is how aspiring strongmen consolidate personal power – lessons from around the globe
The seemingly bizarre series of events that have transpired in Washington since Trump came to power are highly consistent with other countries where democracy has been dismantled.
George Yancy: Frederick Douglass’s Words Ring True: “Power Concedes Nothing Without a Demand”
The draconian measures of the Trump administration must be challenged by way of the mass movements that extend beyond the pale of electoral politics.
