Laure-Anne Bosselaar: When the Bed is Made
How mothers, lovers, nurses & hotel maids,
backs aching, have bent over beds for that last
swift tidying.
Greg Lobas: 07:30 — Six Degrees of Separation
My best friend Dan helped pull the children
from the second story window,
little, smudged Raggedy Ann and Andy.
We had done every futile thing
we could.
Darrell Kaufman: Is it really hotter now than any time in 100,000 years?
Globally, 2023 has seen some of the hottest days in modern measurements, but what about farther back, before weather stations and satellites?
Barbara Crooker: Happiness
This is all there is: the red cherries, the green leaves,
sky like a pale silk dress, and the rise and fall
of the sweet breeze.
Video: Wangechi Mutu | The Timeless, Ancient Language of Art
Using found materials and mesmerizing structures that unearth deep-rooted emotions, Wangechi Mutu’s visual creations celebrate our collective history and explore how art communicates into the future. From ancient rock carvings in the Sahel to her own chimeric abstractions, she shares…
Colleen Hagerty: The Young People Reshaping Wildfire Policy
FireGeneration advocates for Indigenous-led, youth-powered approaches to the wildfire crisis.
Michael Simms: Sun Star
After churning all night
I wake to see the sun star
In the window, its perfect
Blossoms full of light
John Greenleaf Whittier: Telling the Bees
Trembling, I listened: the summer sun
Had the chill of snow;
For I knew she was telling the bees of one
Gone on the journey we all must go!
Abby Zimet: Ida Wells’ Crusade To Arouse the Conscience of America
Anti-lynching agitator, muckraking journalist, fierce suffragist and orator Ida B. Wells, used the media to fight against lynching, “that last relic of barbarism and slavery,” as “color-line murder” based on “the old threadbare lie that Negro men assault white women.”
Daniel Lawless: Velda the Seer
Touching my own cheek as she says this, as if she can see
The red palm slap there, courtesy
Of Raymond, sweet sweater-y sexagenarian
Raymond.
Chase Iron Eyes: Supreme Court Ruling Upholds Native Sovereignty—For Now
The weaponization of our children in order to stamp out our cultures—because, of course, a family or a nation without children has no future—continued after the boarding school era with the epidemic of state-sponsored removal of our young ones and their placement into non-Native foster care.
Wendy Mnookin: The Public Garden
The sun is shining and I’m content
to be myself, walking across the Common
as families queue up by the Swan Boats,
real swans parting the water
in elegant wakes.
Amy Small-McKinney: Neighborhood
What do I know?
Anna with red wings that opened for me and hovered over the houses of bullies.
She is dead now too.
Video: Alua Arthur | Why thinking about death helps you live a better life
What must I do to be at peace with myself so that I may live presently and die gracefully?
