William Palmer | The Glow Fills Something Inside: Lucille Clifton and Alma
among the rocks
at walnut grove
your silence drumming
in my bones,
tell me your names
K.P. Davis: Nell—On Being Prepared
She’d gotten good at fortifying a space quickly, but it took constant vigilance, keeping the rice bag full, and coffee enough for the morning.
Cesare Pavese: Passion for Solitude
Everything stands isolated before my senses,
which accept it calmly: a rustling of silence.
There’s nothing in this darkness I couldn’t know,
the way I know my blood is running through my veins.
James Crews: Mud-Puddling
I don’t want to read another book
or listen to another podcast promising
a better life, the road to happiness.
I just want to love my life as it is
Matthew J. Parker: The ICEY Fingers of Our Prison Industry
Congress has spent decades nullifying even a whiff of comprehensive immigration reform while simultaneously encouraging American businesses to both hire and demonize the cheap labor.
Dewitt Henry: On Grace
Economy and naturalness,
as in ballet, or basketball’s dunk,
or skater’s twirl, leap and glide.
Body’s flow seems effortless.
George Yancy: Black Men Endured Sexual Exploitation Under Slavery. Their Story Is Rarely Told.
There were no legal protections against the rape of enslaved Black women or enslaved Black men.
Dorianne Laux: Spirit Level
I see how my whole life has been a dream,
one she built for me from the ground up,
her daughter, my mother the axe, beautiful
tool with which she shaped me, a house
much like the one she lived in, but smaller
Kurt Brown: A Moment
You stood before me, brushing your long hair,
stroke after stroke in the astonished air
while you talked of nothing, and I sipped my drink.
Delmore Schwartz: O Love, Sweet Animal
O Love, dark animal,
With your strangeness go
Like any freak or clown:
Appease the child in her
Because she is alone
Rashida James-Saadiya: Anti-ICE Organizing Is Creating Counter-Institutions Based on Care
The task now is not to burn brighter or faster, but to build the collective capacity to withstand what’s coming.
Rebecca Gordon: On Seeking Asylum and Refuge
In a Hostile United States
Woody Lewis: Sally Hemings and the Road to Curdsville
I have memories of the apartheid signs on all the restaurants and public facilities. A white person who grew up in the area at that time recently corrected me: “Those weren’t apartheid signs, those were Jim Crow signs.”
Ma Yongbo: Three poems for Helen Pletts in English & Chinese
No one can walk here,
save shy deer, save wind and rain,
save those invisible wings
that can gently lift the whole garden
up to the constellations.
