Naomi Shihab Nye: The Words Under the Words
My grandmother’s days are made of bread,
a round pat-pat and the slow baking.
She waits by the oven watching a strange car
circle the streets. Maybe it holds her son,
lost to America.
Nasser Rabah: The War That Just Won’t End
In wartime the heart expands, becomes a boat for little kids.
An hour of peace and quiet is pure heaven for writing.
Linda Blaskey: Two Poems
The air I take in feels thin, ragged, and rough against the walls of my lungs.
This neighbor to the south of us uses a .22 long rifle.
So does the neighbor to the north.
Bob Dylan: Nobel Lecture
When awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016, Bob Dylan gave no comment for two weeks, ignored the Academy’s calls, didn’t attend the ceremony, and collected the award in a hoodie four months later. But Dylan later sent them a rambling, 27-minute ode to literature.
Mike Schneider: Stirring Up the “Great Folk Scare”
There’s nothing easy-going about the folk songs of the Greenwich Village revival, not the ones Dylan sang — a man-killing woman, catastrophic floods, a man driven insane by love — songs that taught him there’s nothing new on Earth.
Adam Patric Miller: Labyrinth
in the yellow light of that narrow
carpeted hallway that led to my parents’
bedroom. there was a photo of
my great-grandfather Nestor Dreyfus
whose face escaped into my mother’s face
Robbi Nester: Tradition
I learned to light the candles, studied
the old books, taught my son to recognize the one
day of the week, one week of the year when we
eat matzo instead of bread and sing of freedom
and redemption.
Chard deNiord: Inanna and Dumuzi
The sky conjures you all day
into clouds that sack my heart
to the point I hear the growls
and howls of the beasts
they form in the guise of you
Arlene Weiner: Attachments
The lesson I draw over and over
is, everything can change
in a moment.
All that you have is lent.
Barbara Hamby: The Word
In the beginning was the word, fanning out into syllables
like a deck of cards on a table in Vegas
Alfred Corn: All It Is
The flexible arc
described by treetop leaves
when breathing currents ripple
a branch to one,
then the other side.
Jean d’Amérique: Blood in my Gullet
Each kid receives a page ripped from a dirty life;
no minimum age here for taking up the gun.
Don’t be appalled that a boy pays his hood tribute in bullets.
Robert Walicki: Asleep
Another knuckle white morning,
in a neighborhood of slammed doors,
the salt covered cars and trucks in a haze,
saying prayers to the God of paychecks and Friday afternoons.
Michael T. Young: The Need to Believe | The Poetry of Lisel Mueller
This is the power we need in a post-truth world, where political forces claim the right to manipulate our perceptions through distortions of language.
