Ellery Akers: 21 Kids Sue the Government for Not Protecting Them from Climate Change
–Trump Tries to Derail Our Children’s Trust Lawsuit We can do this. We can thread a needle with a river and stitch up the drought. We can dismantle the large, … Continue reading
W. H. Auden: Refugee Blues
Say this city has ten million souls, Some are living in mansions, some are living in holes: Yet there’s no place for us, my dear, yet there’s no place for … Continue reading
Kareem Tayyar: The Ocean is Wide Enough for Many to Walk Upon It
(For Mahmoud Darwish) On the night that Muhammad entered the gospels, Christ was out on the water, Dipping his toes into the sea. Muhammad walked down to the … Continue reading
W. D. Ehrhart: Beautiful Wreckage
What if I didn’t shoot the old lady running away from our patrol, or the old man in the back of the head, or the boy in the marketplace? … Continue reading
Video: Dominique Christina reads “Mothers of Murdered Sons”
. Dominique Christina performs her poem “Mothers of Murdered Sons” at the 2016 Split this Rock festival. Dominique Christina is a poet and teacher who lives in Colorado. She is mother … Continue reading
Elizabeth Kirschner: Parochial Pain
Screened-in porch. In summer. Orchard darkness in a fox pelt of woods. Quiet flat as a dime, as the Midwest itself. I rock, smoke cigarettes. The bead-heads of tobacco smell … Continue reading
Christopher Soden: Days of Dreaming
suppose the life you swallowed was not yours but moonlight . gone sour a glass key you needed to secure suppose the dead were not . the strychnine you imagined … Continue reading
Dawn Potter: This Guy in the Mug Shot
Chevrolet cowboy, milk-cow intimidator, today is not your day. Slipping, dipping, hunting, mudding— another jagged ode in your Jägermeister. Somewhere, island horses break trail, high on AC/DC and … Continue reading
Justin Vicari: Ghazal — Abundance
As kids, we loved the mulberry tree in my cousin Kathy’s yard. We stood under that mulberry tree like our own vine hut, eating our way through the afternoons. Our … Continue reading
Leonard Gontarek: Sanctuary
My name is Leonard Gontarek. I survived the attack at the Grand 16 Theater where Trainwreck was playing. I gave it 3 out of 4 stars. I had cheese on … Continue reading
Joan E. Bauer: Dreaming of Prague
I can almost imagine the euforie those first days of Revolution. The crowds at Wenceslas Square. Even the police cheering. Václav Havel riding a pedal scooter through the … Continue reading
Wendy Mnookin: NICU
. Why is this night different Why is this night different from all other nights? Wine and matza and now our children tossing in their childhood beds, dreams tumbling … Continue reading
Leslie McGrath: Mumblety Peg
And when the truth about the emperor’s clothes was revealed the crowd convulsing with laughter at his flaccid gullibility you noticed a young man easing the battered patty of a … Continue reading
Percy Bysshe Shelley: England in 1819
. An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying King; Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow Through public scorn,—mud from a muddy spring; Rulers who neither see nor … Continue reading
