Charles Harper Webb: Bad Dog
Bad Dog licks killers’ bloody hands,
leaps with joy for rapists, fawns at politicians’
crooked feet. “He’s an awful judge
of character,” the owner tells kind-hearted
strangers who scuttle past
Cynthia Kaufman: Jewish Safety and the Weaponization of Antisemitism
The conflation of criticisms of Israel with antisemitism makes Jews less safe.
Baruch November: After Bracha
A blessing for just being able
to arise in early pink-blue light.
A blessing for when lightning veins
a cloud or strikes the oak into flames.
A blessing for when the earth quakes
Byron Hoot: The Mind in the Wind Seeing Where Things Lie
What I need are nights
of deep sleep; this riding the wind is not as easy
as it would seem to be.
Octavia E. Butler: Kindness eases change / Love quiets fear
In order to rise from its own ashes, a Phoenix first must burn.
Barbara Hamby: Mockingbird on the Buddha
The mockingbird on the Buddha says, Where’s my seed,
you Jezebel, where’s the sunshine in my blue sky,
where’s the Hittite princess, Pharaoh’s temple, where’s the rain
for the misery I love so much?
Chana Bloch: Memento Mori
Unblessed in a downburst, I lost
my leafy summer, my lovely,
my crest, my crown.
Robert Cording: New Morning
Always that moment
when I wake up
in the dark
before dawn
and the first birds
Baron Wormser: What Nurtures Us, What Diminishes Us
Poetry is the remembrance and avowal of loss and is accordingly pushed aside.
Amy Lowell: Lilacs
The bright eyes of song sparrows sitting on spotted eggs
Peer restlessly through the light and shadow
Of all Springs.
Shaheen Dil: From Letters to my Younger Self
Today my three-card spread says there’s a Twinkie in my future again
Lola Haskins: Field Notes
You were born breathing water.
Grown, you push your prey from the air
into the basket of your legs
o angel bright as grass
hovering above the red flowers.
Rachel Hadas: Pastorals
Its title is Red Comet, but the book itself is more like a long freight train, a slow train, a train crammed with information, a train that stops at every station, not to let anyone out but to take more in.
Video: The commencement address that Harvard suppressed for mentioning genocide
Who are the people who remind you of your worth and give you the courage to try again? And who are the people who sit with you as we witness the moral injuries of our time?
