Jane Mead: Passing a Truck Full of Chickens/at Night on Highway Eighty
I saw the one that made me slow some—
I lingered there beside her for five miles.
Jessica Corbett: Spain Joins Italy in Sending Ship to Protect Gaza-Bound Sumud Flotilla
The UN special rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territories implored other countries “to mobilize their fleet to grant the flotilla safe sailing to Gaza, and deploy a real humanitarian convoy to break the blockade.”
Frida Berrigan: Preparing for Scarcity
The truck wheel’s inner tube was right in front of me, no longer half-submerged in the pond’s late summer muck. After so many hot weeks without rain, the water had dried up and the garbage was completely exposed.
Abby Zimet: Optuse Sexual Predator Approved
In honor of his speech at the UN, wherein he raved, bloviated and browbeat world leaders, patriots have erected a new statue in D.C. of Trump and his “closest friend” Jeffrey Epstein
John Ashbery: A Worldly Country
For night, as usual, knew what it was doing,
providing sleep to offset the great ungluing
that tomorrow again would surely bring.
Ted Kooser: Abandoned Farmhouse
Something went wrong, says the empty house
in the weed-choked yard. Stones in the fields
say he was not a farmer; the still-sealed jars
in the cellar say she left in a nervous haste.
Michelle Zacarias: In Southern California, Small Groups of Activists Quietly Undermine ICE Operations
Organizers confront ICE wherever they can be found, from the hotels where agents sleep to the streets they patrol.
Thom Hartmann: Will US Democracy Survive? This Is a Threshold Moment
The moment is urgent. If we don’t speak up and rise up now, we may not get another chance.
Barbara Hamby: Ode to Hardware Stores
Where have all the hardware stores gone—dusty, sixty-watt
warrens with wood floors, cracked linoleum,
poured concrete painted blood red?
Video: Let There Be Light (John Huston’s 1946 documentary about PTSD)
The film was intended to educate the public about post-traumatic stress disorder and its treatment among returning veterans, but its unscripted presentation of mental disability caused the U.S. government to suppress the film.
Michael Simms: Two Poems Inspired by Sean Sexton
Some people should be allowed to live forever
on the basis of our world’s great need. — Sean Sexton
Lisa M. Hase-Jackson: Post Solstice Academics
my ancestors are
druid tree-dwellers, forest dancers
intimate with boreal communities
and life’s brief promise—
Kenneth A. Carlson: Does Character Still Matter in the Age of Trump?
Democracies with high levels of corruption and low trust in leaders’ integrity are significantly more prone to backsliding toward authoritarianism.
Edna St. Vincent Millay: What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why
What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning; but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply
