Michael Simms: Apologies for the tech glitches at Vox Populi Sphere
Friends, odd things have been happening with the Vox Populi website lately.
Rebecca Gordon: American Gulag
We know we can dismantle the American gulag, because some of us are already doing it. It’s time for the rest of us to get to work.
James Crews: The Pond at Sunset
I forget I’ve already arrived
in the life I want, and that I am
still arriving at the same time.
Andrew Reginald Hairston: On Building
I lost my second election on March 3, 2026…. I’m just getting started.
Alison Hurwitz: Submerged
the story run across his skin, his mind a moving wheel
that cannot stop its circling, bearing down the road
with grackle wings, a story leafing past each turning
Eman Abu Zayed: With Gaza’s Libraries in Ruins, Palestinians Fight to Preserve Historical Memory
More than 87 public libraries and archives in Gaza have been partially or completely destroyed by Israel’s genocide.
Ma Yongbo: Frost on the Window
It is spring now and the frost on the window is gradually thinning.
Senator Bernie Sanders: I spoke to AI agent Claude
I spoke to Anthropic’s AI agent Claude about AI collecting massive amounts of personal data and how that information is being used to violate our privacy rights. What an AI agent says about the dangers of AI is shocking and should wake us up.
Dorianne Laux: The Optimism of French Toast
I think of my Acadian ancestors
landing on the shores of Nova Scotia, divining
logs from the deep woods, fashioning windows,
hanging laundry from two oars dug into sand—
the flags of domesticity flayed by the wind.
Michael Simms: Trump’s Nightmare
Who is James Talarico, and why does the Trump administration fear him?
Al Ortolani: Prayer Boat
Each night I say a prayer of thanks
to some higher power, a thanks for
the chance to be alive as a thinking
being, for the family and friends
that surround me
H.C. Palmer: An Old Kansas Farm Boy’s Take on Gary Snyder’s “Hay for the Horses” or Why I Became a Poet
In the early 1950s I worked summers as a part of a team of 4 high school football players bucking bales of alfalfa hay for a local rancher in Southeast Kansas. We moved over 1,000 bales from his hay meadow to the loft in his barn each cutting.
Lisel Mueller: Monet Refuses the Operation
I tell you it has taken me all my life
to arrive at the vision of gas lamps as angels,
to soften and blur and finally banish
the edges you regret I don’t see
Barbara Crooker: For My Grandchildren
We sat on the porch swing in the fragrant dark
scented by roses and lilies, knowing we were
about to lose everything, but powerless to stop it.
