Abby Zimet: Watering While Black
Having grown up (black) in the American South, the good Rev. Michael Jennings, 56, both was and wasn’t surprised last May 22 by the “surreal” arrival of (white) cops in his small Alabama town to confront his nefarious crime of watering a neighbor’s flowers like the good Christian he is.
Baron Wormser: The Shuffle
Lost my soul in the shuffle.
Got a self instead.
Not a fair deal, not even-Steven,
Not Roger-dodger.
Steve Fraser: The Trump Supreme Court Is Nothing New
Has the Trump Supreme Court gone rogue? Certainly, its recent judicial blitzkrieg has run roughshod over a century’s worth of settled law.
Kari Gunter-Seymour: To No One in Particular
I am never happy to see summer go,
earth stripped of its finest voice.
Adrienne Maree Brown: Breaking is part of healing
I was in a conversation recently with a friend who had just returned from a meditation retreat. She said one of the ideas shared with her group was that “the teacup is already broken,” a meditation on how the death or ending or brokenness we fear is inevitable.
Chard deNiord: To the Luna Moth
Out of nowhere, which is every-
where, I sang to you with a tongue
in the form of a leaf as you fell
asleep…
Jake Johnson: Demands for Clarence Thomas to Resign Follow New Details of Wife’s Election Scheming
Clarence Thomas heard election cases while his wife conspired to overthrow democracy.
Carol Frost: Now Soon
Father and mother time to rise up put away the dark
give back to him more than he can ever use give what is
not his to have what he never knew he knows and all he feels
Video: Church and the Fourth Estate
When a reporter uncovers a file that reveals a shocking series of child-abuse allegations in Idaho’s Boy Scouts, the investigation rattles a tight-knit community and implicates the Mormon Church.
Attracta Fahy: Two Poems
We walk home from the fields,
our young backs arched, aching,
from spreading slits.
Video: Jaimie G | Animals
Comedian Jaimie G talks about our treatment of animals, the environmental impact of animal agriculture and much more in this spoken word poem.
Wendy Cope: Lissadell
The light of evening. A gazelle.
It seemed unchanged since Yeats’s day.
Last year we went to Lissadell
And life was good and all is well.
Carlene M. Gadapee: Accidental Hymn by Dawn Potter
Dawn’s speakers are the collective voice of the common person: she captures the hard-working, angry, sad, loving, celebratory voices of the Maine woods and coast, the hills of Appalachia, the house-bound and the homesick…
Rupert Brooke: The Fish
O world of lips, O world of laughter,
Where hope is fleet and thought flies after,
Of lights in the clear night, of cries
That drift along the wave and rise
