Audio: Danez Smith reads “not an elegy for Mike Brown”
I am sick of writing this poem
but bring the boy. his new name
his same old body. ordinary, black
dead thing. bring him & we will mourn
Abby Zimet: Gobsmacking Fabulists ‘R Us
For the anniversary of the Jan. 6 riot that almost toppled democracy (more quickly than now), the hacks and crackpots in power have concocted a deranged revisionist history of such “evil,” “pathological,” “Stalin-level propaganda” it’s somehow dragged us even further through the looking glass.
DeWitt Henry: Forces of Nature | A Dream Retold
In my dream, the poor people, on the contrary, many of who are Korean, have lost everything, all of their children. They have had no warning.
Emanuel Pastreich: Our Unequal Economy Means the US Can’t Quit War
The military buildup is but a transfer of wealth, not an increase in security.
Rosaly DeMaios Roffman: How My Father Does It
Tomorrow, I fly home to teach Prometheus—
that story of saving the universe with fire
and then enduring the eagle punishment
but my raised voice will be for my father
Alan McPherson: A predawn op in Latin America? The US has been here before, but the seizure of Venezuela’s Maduro is still unprecedented
What will preoccupy many regional governments in Latin America, and policy experts in Washington, is whether the White House has considered the consequences to this latest escalation.
Video: Contractions
In 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court ended a woman’s right to a safe and legal abortion in the United States. “Contractions” takes us to Memphis, Tennessee where we contemplate the discontinuation of abortion services at a women’s health clinic.
Matthew J. Parker: Cruise Missile Policing | The Latest Drug War Hysteria of our Nannies in Chief
So, what’s to be done? Why, educate, of course, and stop running scared.
Ellen McGrath Smith: Dream, 2025
brown faces falling toward us, arms
and legs dislocated by updraft, indigenous faces we knew from our daily rounds to buy groceries and tacos
Erin Wax: How 12-step programs can help build healthier movements
The 12-step method that began with Alcoholics Anonymous is a form of mutual aid that can help movement organizers take better care of each other.
Barbara Crooker: When I Gave Away My Tent
…some protection from sun, snow, rain in this, the very imperfect
twenty-first century where working two jobs isn’t enough to get
an apartment in a country where too much is not enough.
Sydney Lea: La Bella Vita
We oddly felt we’d come home when, having left behind the dreadful heat and crowds of Rome, we settled into a rented house in Umbria, a sturdy little structure built in 1434
David Kirby: The Way I See It
I wonder if our bosses have any idea how much time we spend
thinking about them. My friend Silvia can’t sleep because
she can’t remember the name of her boss from twenty years ago.
Judith Sanders: Bubbe and Zayde Take Me to the Ice Capades
I danced past the hospital playroom
where bald children rode tricycles,
because you, my son, would get well.
