Vox Populi

A curated webspace for Poetry, Politics, and Nature with over 6,000,000 visitors since 2014 and over 9,000 archived posts.

Patricia Jabbeh Wesley: When Monrovia Rises

All day, boys younger
than history can remember, shout at one another
on a street corner near me about a country they
have never seen.

January 9, 2023 · 5 Comments

Larry Levis | At the Grave of My Guardian Angel: St. Louis Cemetery, New Orleans

And without beauty, Bakunin will go on making his forlorn & unreliable little bombs in the cold, & Oswald will adjust   
The lenses on the scope of his rifle, the one
Friend he has carried with him all the way out of his childhood,
The silent wood of its stock as musical to him in its grain as any violin.

January 8, 2023 · 12 Comments

Video: Good Grief

On the day of her dad’s ash-scattering, Nora rejects the notion that her grief comes in five tidy, predictable stages.

January 8, 2023 · Leave a comment

Barbara Hamby: Ode to Forgetting the Year

remember the day at the beach when the sun
began to explain Heidegger to you while thunderclouds
rumbled up from the horizon like Nazi submarines?

January 7, 2023 · 12 Comments

Christian Jarrett: The bad news on human nature, in 10 findings from psychology

Here we spread some bad news about… well, all of us… through 10 dispiriting findings that reveal the darker and less impressive aspects of human nature…

January 7, 2023 · 8 Comments

Aric Sleeper: ‘Public Trust’—A Key Legal Tool to Preserve Our Natural Resources

There are underutilized legal weapons already on the books that can help fight big corporations and preserve the planet’s natural resources, such as watersheds and large forests… That legal weapon, a component of property law, is a concept known as the ‘public trust.’

January 6, 2023 · Leave a comment

D.H. Lawrence: Piano

Softly, in the dusk, a woman is singing to me;
Taking me back down the vista of years, till I see
A child sitting under the piano

January 6, 2023 · 12 Comments

Abby Zimet: It Was Dark. It Was Loud. It Was Hard For Many.

In America, where the dark and crazy remain strong, we choose to begin the year taking solace and inspiration from President Zelensky…

January 5, 2023 · 1 Comment

Edison Jennings: Old Times There Are Not Forgotten

A student at Patrick Henry High, Oakum
asserted he didn’t give a shit about Marse Robert,
Stonewall Jackson, Beaux Beauregard, or any
of them fancy Southern boys

January 5, 2023 · 5 Comments

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer: An Open Thank You Letter to Kristen Who Works at the Cemetery

There are moments so flooded with tenderness
every wall around our heart collapses
from the beauty of it

January 4, 2023 · 20 Comments

Nolo Segundo: The Day I Remembered My Soul

When I was 24, I killed myself. I put it that bluntly because it was not an attempted suicide, a cry for help, but a decision to self-murder. Yes, it … Continue reading

January 4, 2023 · 7 Comments

Jade Prévost-Manuel: Could Breadfruit Help Trinidad and Tobago Brace for Climate Change?

Despite its colonial origins, breadfruit is now the subject of international research to evaluate its potential as a staple crop in a warming world.

January 3, 2023 · 3 Comments

Michael Gregory: Third Day of Christmas | Earth Air Wood Water Fire

Too many missing from this year’s mailing list.
Looking back I’m humbled to remember
how many stupid things I’ve done and survived

January 3, 2023 · 2 Comments

Derrick Z. Jackson: Black College Students Are An Endangered Species Unless They Play Ball

One thing seems certain if the Supreme Court bans affirmative action in college admissions: The only Black men left on campus will be athletes.

January 2, 2023 · 4 Comments

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