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.
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!
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.
Jyotika Saksena: Common Misperceptions About Refugees
America needs more refugees, not less.
Alfred W. McCoy: Cold Wars, Hot Planet, and New Geopolitical Firestorms
With so many mesmerized by the conflict in Ukraine and the possibility of another over Taiwan, world leaders largely ignore the rising threat of climate change.
Bill Lueders: Beyond Good and Evil | On Wendell Berry’s Brave New Book
A book by the celebrated author, poet, and farmer that takes on racism, the Civil War, and his life’s work.
Robert M. Dover: Nobel peace prize goes to Belarusian, Russian and Ukrainian human rights activists
On the 70th birthday of Russian president Vladimir Putin, the Nobel prize committee has recognised the work of three winners who are all battling against Putin or pro-Putin regimes.
