Rabbi Angela Buchdahl: The Cries of Isaac and Ishmael
We can feel brokenhearted for the suffering of the children of Isaac and of Ishmael. We must.
Jane Mead: Passing a Truck Full of Chickens/at Night on Highway Eighty
I saw the one that made me slow some—
I lingered there beside her for five miles.
John Ashbery: A Worldly Country
For night, as usual, knew what it was doing,
providing sleep to offset the great ungluing
that tomorrow again would surely bring.
Baruch November: Victor “Young” Perez
The Jewish flyweight from Tunisia—
who modeled himself after the Battling Siki,
a boxer from Senegal—
should have died early in the ring,
Michael Simms: Two Poems Inspired by Sean Sexton
Some people should be allowed to live forever
on the basis of our world’s great need. — Sean Sexton
Tony Hoagland: Sweet Ruin
Maybe that is what he was after,
my father, when he arranged, ten years ago,
to be discovered in a mobile home
with a woman named Roxanne, an attractive,
recently divorced masseuse.
James Crews: Light and Dark
Half-awake, I lose myself in a pool
of late morning sun and leaf-shadows
flashing on the floor outside my bedroom,
what the Japanese call komorebi—light
and dark held in the same container
of a single moment, as we hold them in us,
Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis: Beware Rich Men Quoting the Bible to Punish the Poor
There is never a suggestion, of course, that the rich, who have functionally stolen people’s wages and engorged themselves by denying them healthcare, are in any way to blame.
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer: Design
Whatever is sacred, I feel it in canyons,
these earthen temples to surrender—
such holy architecture
with their deep and ancient silence
Robinson Jeffers: The Place for No Story
A herd of cows and the bull
Far distant, hardly apparent up the dark slope;
And the gray air haunted with hawks
Video: A Kind Favor
On the magical coast of Central California, a grandmother reflects on a life filled with art, love, and tragedy.
Luray Gross: Catching Sight
Take my hand. Let us walk together, even with war raging,
with the sea rising, with the oriole’s winter home
yielding to chainsaw and bulldozer.
With so many songs being left unsung,
let us sing.
Sean Sexton: Plea
An evening has passed, and a young cow is still
crying among the herd this morning like the widow
in the Bible who wouldn’t leave an ill-tempered
judge alone.
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer: What I Know of Love When Times Are Dark
And if you don’t
know how to pray,
then perhaps you are doing it right.
