Paul Christensen: Sailing the Seas of Memory
Five days into our sea voyage and we are in a hazy, slightly coolish mid-day. It’s another day and a half before we slow down and head for Southampton, England. Can’t wait.
Lynne Thompson: Sleep, Country Of
it’s almost time for today’s circadian alarm which is the same in Gaza as in Glendale, California. But not yet, Grasshopper, not yet.
Fred Johnston: The Art of War
I can tell by the weight of your voice
How long this room-to-room guerrilla war will to last
Naomi Shihab Nye: Different Ways to Pray
There were the men who had been shepherds so long
they walked like sheep.
Under the olive trees, they raised their arms—
Hear us! We have pain on earth!
Lisa Suhair Majaj: For the Dead Among Us
We will keep you alive
in our longing, in our breath.
Brett Wilkins: ‘I Am Not a Terrorist’: Letters From Gaza Children Decry Daily Horrors of Israeli Assault
A U.K.-based humanitarian group on Tuesday delivered “heartbreaking” letters from two Palestinian girls—including one who lost her arm in an Israeli attack—imploring new Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer to intervene.
Assassination attempt on Trump in Western Pennsylvania
A gunman opened fire at former President Donald Trump at a Pennsylvania rally Saturday, injuring him and causing him to be rushed offstage in a dramatic scene just days before he’s set to be nominated as the Republican presidential nominee.
Heather Davis: Spare No Detail | Three Poems about Gaza
Imagine a smart phone with crystal clear transmission
set in every corner of Auschwitz in 1943. Surely, we
would have saved them, every one.
Andrea Mazzarino: America’s War on Terror and the Wasting of Our Democracy
The rapid pace of Gaza’s descent into famine is remarkable among conflicts.
Mandy Fessenden-Brauer: Two Poems About the Orchards of Gaza
Although it’s one of the most densely populated areas in the world, Gaza’s always had a distinct rural quality. Everyone grew something, some in agricultural areas away from their homes. Even in the very crowded refugee camps there were small atriums with a tree and potted plants.
Laure-Anne Bosselaar: The Worlds in this World
Elsewhere, somewhere, a tide recedes,
incense is lit, an infant sucks from a nipple,
a grenade shrieks, a man buys his first cane.
Angele Ellis: “I lived in the dark” | In Grace Notes, Naomi Shihab Nye finds the music in poems about families and the incidents and accidents of personal history
All poetry begins in song, as Naomi Shihab Nye reminds the reader, starting with the title of her latest collection, 117 mostly brief free verse poems that like songs, are both accessible and mysterious.
Patricia Nugent: No Time for Memes
There is a current meme imploring us not to lose friends over politics. This is becoming impossible for me. I would not have been able to continue a friendship with someone who began wearing a swastika armband in the late 1930s.
Abby Zimet: From Founding Fathers Kermit and Gandalf to Mugshot $2 Bills | Make Crass Stupidity Embarrassing Again
Nazis, yahoos, hacks, thugs, soulless partisans and ahistorical morons are today’s GOP. Have we bottomed out yet (please)?