Vox Populi

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

Ma Yongbo: Swimmer in the Ocean

On a painting by Deborah Bogen

June 29, 2025 · 7 Comments

Video: She Sells Seashells

Archival footage meets contemporary black and white super 8, in a curious exploration of the female cockle gatherers of South Wales and the surprising secrets shellfish and seaweed hold for our oceans’ health.

June 29, 2025 · 5 Comments

Video: The F-Word

A dad struggles to give an age-appropriate explanation of the expletive.

June 28, 2025 · 8 Comments

Michael Simms: The Cove

I loved those mornings
of timeless simplicity.
I learned patience
is not something you work for
but something you wait for

June 28, 2025 · 55 Comments

Desne A. Crossley: A Wallflower and Her Mother

Clueless about west coast Whiteness, for sure. For my anxious mother, this meant I needed her singular brand of watchful encouragement to grow into a whole person, a whole woman—and to be taught some street smarts for life in suburban Palo Alto with its unfamiliar patterns and pitfalls.

June 27, 2025 · 14 Comments

Cesare Pavese: Ancestors

I found out I had lived, before I was born,
in hard, sturdy, independent men, their own masters.
None of them knew what to say, so they just kept quiet.

June 27, 2025 · 7 Comments

Rebecca Gordon: How Will Your Data Be Deployed

In an Age of Dark Enlightenment?

June 26, 2025 · 7 Comments

Kim Stafford: Four Poems

Her text says the bombing is getting
closer. She dozes, there’s a blast, a rattle
of debris falling somewhere near. She says
every bomb makes an earthquake. Her heart
stops. She says the forces are getting closer.

June 26, 2025 · 8 Comments

Henry A. Giroux: From the Streets of LA to the National Stage, The Left Must Win the Cultural War

Trump’s war on dissent can only be defeated by a left that challenges the values sustaining authoritarianism.

June 25, 2025 · 3 Comments

Alice Friman: The Nick Poems

Do you know what you’re doing?
and she said yes
though deep in her virginity
she knew nothing
but what she wanted

June 25, 2025 · 15 Comments

Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove: Americans Don’t Want Trump’s Illegal War on Iran

Trump has dragged the United States into another unnecessary war because his “America First” agenda is failing at home. He is using big bombs like a little man.

June 24, 2025 · 3 Comments

Emilie Lygren: With and Without

Hunger ––
I can’t hear the word
without my mind swinging to Gaza.

June 24, 2025 · 5 Comments

Kahlil Gibran: War

One night a feast was held in the palace, and there came a man and prostrated himself before the prince, and all the feasters looked upon him; and they saw that one of his eyes was out and that the empty socket bled.

June 23, 2025 · 8 Comments

Watson Institute, Brown University: US military aid to Israel

This report includes the $17.9 billion the U.S. government has approved for Israeli military operations in Gaza from 10/7/23 to 12/31/24.

June 23, 2025 · Leave a comment

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