Barbara Crooker: Praise Songs for Autumn
Each day, we must learn
again how to love, between morning’s quick coffee
and evening’s slow return.
Brett Wilkins: Trump Murder Spree Continues as Hegseth Says 14 Killed in 3 New Boat Bombings
US forces have conducted over a dozen strikes on alleged drug-running boats in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean since early September, killing at least 57 people, according to Trump administration figures.
Abby Zimet: Pity the Nation/ Whose Shepherds Mislead Them
Amidst plunging polls and righteous rage at his Epstein Memorial Ballroom, the inept manchild faces growing resistance, sublime to ridiculous, to his nascent kingship.
David Kirby: Leg Day at the Gym
Life isn’t always hard, but it’s almost never easy.
Steve Nolan: Destroying America, The Brand
A malignant narcissist has come to power.
Daniella Toosie-Watson: A Series of Small Miracles
Listen: in this poem, there are no men.
I give to myself & give again.
Christine Rhein: Chop Suey
A bright, spring coat hangs on a hook—Chop Suey customers
unaware Wall Street will crash, the country will plunge into war
upon war, torrents of technology. Yet already, in their face-to-face
hunger—no smiles, no laughter shatters the loneliness.
Cesare Pavese: Notes on Certain Unwritten Poems
The poem he will write is like a door, it opens out to his ability to create; and he will go through that door—he will write other poems, he will exploit the ground and leave it exhausted.
Kyle Schmidlin: Republicans Are Trying to Make Fascism Edgy and Hip
By declaring all opposition to themselves anti-fascism, MAGA isn’t leaving much mystery about their leanings.
Barbara Crooker: Coffee
Because each day
is a fresh new start, revised as the sky
after rain. Because my mug is full
of dark goodness, and the day is a clean
blank sheet.
Norman Solomon: How Corporate Democrats Led to the Trump Era
Corporate-friendly approaches by the Democratic Party set the stage for Trump’s faux “populism” as an imagined solution to the discontent that the corporatism of the Democrats had helped usher in.
Louise Bogan: Simple Autumnal
The measured blood beats out the year’s delay.
The tearless eyes and heart, forbidden grief,
Watch, the burned, restless, but abiding leaf,
The brighter branches arming the bright day.
Julie L. Holcomb: 177 years ago, the Seneca Falls Convention kicked off the fight for women’s suffrage – an iconic moment deeply shaped by Quaker beliefs on gender and equality
Real change, Lucretia Mott believed, would require going to the root of the problem: “mindless tradition and savage greed.”
