Patricia Jabbeh Wesley: Erecting Stones
Here, in Congo Town, I’m picking up debris
from twenty years ago. Some remnants of bombs
and missile splinters, old pieces of shells from
the unknown past.
Lasse Söderberg: The dead children in the Tajo River
They have left the city
and their blind games
under the white bone of the sun
Wayne Karlin: The Lotus Eaters
And so he returned to Ithaca:
walked naked from the sea
and saw his shadow
fall on the white marble
Kelly Denton-Borhaug: The Intolerable Price You Pay
More than 17 of you veterans take your own lives every day. And you live with all of this, while so much of the rest of the nation fails to muster the will to see you, hear you, or face honestly the American addiction to war.
Valerie Bacharach: Night, Descending
Night explodes in fractures of shining glass.
Sidewalks hold storefront fragments,
deadly crystals glitter,
almost beautiful with still-red blood.
Rev. William J. Barber II, Karen Dolan: This is an Election Americans Cannot Afford to Lose
The stakes for America’s poor and low-income families are huge this election.
Richard Cambridge: In Medias Res
Tom, the eldest son of Daniel and Helen Brownson, tells his parents he has dropped out of college. He is now in the crosshairs of the draft board and will be re-classified 1-A — a good chance he will be sent to — and possibly die in Vietnam.
Yahya Frederickson: Duqq
I believe only the desert
can know the aridity
of cardamom, coffee, and ginger.
Christine Rhein: People used to ask
my father for advice — how to fix
a chimney crack,
a sagging porch, how to realign
a patio — bricks upheaved
Baron Wormser: Against Hope
Hope gives us a margin for our industriousness that keeps inventing new purposes for new machines, an industriousness that often seems to be only making everything worse.
Jennifer Brookland: Holding On When Leaving Feels Like Letting Go
I spent four years in the military and remember it in fuzzy flashes. The little I do recall leaves me with a vague sense of awkward incompetence, confusion, and shame.
Walt Whitman: Come Up from the Fields Father
Open the envelope quickly,
O this is not our son’s writing, yet his name is sign’d,
O a strange hand writes for our dear son, O stricken mother’s soul!
Jyotika Saksena: Common Misperceptions About Refugees
America needs more refugees, not less.
