Mike Schneider: A Hammer not a Mirror
A Discussion with Anne Feeney & Utah Phillips
Joy Gaines-Friedler: Detroit
I think of the sound of factories in the voice
of an old boyfriend from The Cass Corridor –
cocoon of his attic bedroom, mattress on the floor,
candle light and books in that long season of snow
Gerry LaFemina: Security
My carry-on flagged for protein
bars that might be plastique, & I failed
the swab test, some residue battery acid
or fertilizer on my fingertips.
Ray Levy Uyeda: How Organizers Are Fighting an American Legacy of Forced Sterilization
The U.S. has a history of sterilizing women without their knowledge or permission, but states are working to make up for past mistakes.
Jan-Mitchell Sherrill: Two love poems
Come with me
to the river again: we will test Heraclitus,
kiss deep at the tender point of sleepless change.
Rebecca Gordon: The Fire Next Time
If we do succeed in destroying ourselves, it seems increasingly likely that it will be by fire, whether the accelerating heating of the globe over decades, or a nuclear conflagration any time we choose. The good news, the flame of hope, is that we still have time — at least 100 seconds — to prevent it.
Christine Skarbek: A journey into self or what Auschwitz can do to the soul
I saw the cell where the Jesuit priest Maximilian Kolbe starved to near death as he attended to nine others, all Jews. He was later executed. The space isn’t bigger than my walk-in closet.
Andrew Reginald Hairston: Pandemic Reflections on Money
I did everything right, but I perpetually had very little money.
BJ Ward: In Memoriam | The Victims of the Bowling Green Massacre
Here’s to the blood that wasn’t shed,
That still courses through hearts and
untroubled heads—
Pamela Haines, George Lakey: Why we must start imagining the world we want to live in
The center of America is not Washington, D.C. The center of America is the neighborhoods where 330 million Americans are raising their kids and trying to put food on the table and trying to love their neighbor. That’s the center of America.
Video: Joe Biden and Elizabeth Alexander discuss “Those Winter Sundays” by Robert Hayden
President-elect Joe Biden, poet Elizabeth Alexander, psychologist Angela Duckworth, and a chorus of working fathers and sons join Poetry in America host Elisa New to reflect on Robert Hayden’s sonnet “Those Winter Sundays.”
Video: A Sister’s Hope
Jamira Burley should be another product of the system. Instead, she has used the tragedies of her life to reshape her community, and disrupt the status quo.
William Stafford: Traveling through the Dark
Traveling through the dark I found a deer
dead on the edge of the Wilson River road.
Martina Reisz Newberry: Romans
We will look back at the last of the sunflowers leaning so low, and we’ll recall the “end times,” swooning at the way the brown sky infiltrated houses
