Seamus Heaney: Personal Helicon
As a child, they could not keep me from wells
And old pumps with buckets and windlasses.
I loved the dark drop, the trapped sky, the smells
Of waterweed, fungus and dank moss.
Grannies Respond/Abuelas Responden: Go Granny Go!
Elisa visited a Dallas boys’ migrant detention facility. “This hit me. This could have been my father. It was like a prison. The kids were depressed. Some were suicidal. It was heartbreaking.”
Majid Naficy: Two Neighbors
The scent of chicken tahchin
Is wafting up to me
Through the window
And I know soon
She will knock at my door…
Derrick Z. Jackson: Why Does White East Palestine, Ohio Get Apologies, But None for Black Cancer Alley?
East Palestine, Ohio is getting endless apologies as Cancer Alley in Louisiana deals daily with a petrochemical wall of denial.
Robbi Nester | Fog and Moonlight: Margaret in her Nightgown, alone in Bella’s yard
You threw off the rumpled sheets,
glided down the stairs and out the door,
leaving it open behind you
Abby Zimet: Banning Eagle Song, Dragons Love Tacos, A Thai Lullaby and Pink! To Protect the Children
The nationwide rush to “protect the innocence of children” from the perils of thinking for themselves accelerated last week…
Daniel Tobin: The Lens
Into the wreck an available light
reigns down, more mist than glitter
Declan McCabe: The Science Behind Streams and Rivers
65% of the river water discharging to our oceans is associated with threatened habitats.
Mary Jane White: Axe
Always the trapped smell of sunlight
& the oiled axe to split the last of the kindling
& the bank’s rippled edge & the heavy suckerfish
Joan E. Bauer: It Takes a Lifetime
They’d both mastered the ‘poetics of place,’
small-town Mississippi and post-war California.
Welty believed & surely Macdonald agreed:
‘No art ever came from not risking your neck.’
Video: Homesick
An absurdist thriller about an unhappy man who attends a retreat offering adults a second chance at a happy childhood.
Chard deNiord: Tree of Wisdom
I am taken in by its stand and breadth,
marveling at its brawn and reach of branches,
studying each leaf like the page of a sacred book,
embracing its trunk like a void.
Video: “The Tub” by Amy Hempel (with text)
My heart—I thought it stopped. So I got in my car and headed for God.
Richard Feynman: Letter to Arline
I find it hard to understand in my mind what it means to love you after you are dead — but I still want to comfort and take care of you — and I want you to love me and care for me. I want to have problems to discuss with you — I want to do little projects with you.
