Video: Contractions
In 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court ended a woman’s right to a safe and legal abortion in the United States. “Contractions” takes us to Memphis, Tennessee where we contemplate the discontinuation of abortion services at a women’s health clinic.
Byron Hoot: Dance Instructor & There Are Reasons
“Now you. Just remember
when you were a bear.”
Matthew J. Parker: Cruise Missile Policing | The Latest Drug War Hysteria of our Nannies in Chief
So, what’s to be done? Why, educate, of course, and stop running scared.
Diane di Prima: Buddhist New Year Song
it is truth, that we came here, I told you,
from other planets
where we were lords, we were sent here,
for some purpose
Ellen McGrath Smith: Dream, 2025
brown faces falling toward us, arms
and legs dislocated by updraft, indigenous faces we knew from our daily rounds to buy groceries and tacos
Stuart Kestenbaum: Prayer for Joy
Every butterfly knows that the end
is different from the beginning
and that it is always a part
of a longer story
Naomi Shihab Nye: Generations
At the end of an unseasonably warm day
New Year’s Eve 2017
I stood in my kitchen holding
one wooden spoon.
Vox Populi: The Most Popular posts of 2025
Since mainland China blocks western media, I was very surprised a few months ago when a flood of visitors from China began clicking on Vox Populi.
Erin Wax: How 12-step programs can help build healthier movements
The 12-step method that began with Alcoholics Anonymous is a form of mutual aid that can help movement organizers take better care of each other.
Chard deNiord: Erebus
This is the river’s music that still plays
like the wind in its accompaniment
to the only song I know how to sing
Barbara Crooker: When I Gave Away My Tent
…some protection from sun, snow, rain in this, the very imperfect
twenty-first century where working two jobs isn’t enough to get
an apartment in a country where too much is not enough.
Sydney Lea: La Bella Vita
We oddly felt we’d come home when, having left behind the dreadful heat and crowds of Rome, we settled into a rented house in Umbria, a sturdy little structure built in 1434
Luray Gross: The Boy and the Mockingbird
Once in a time not so
long ago, there was a boy
generous enough to share
his name
with a mockingbird
Michael T. Young: How to Read a Poem
The experience of reading a poem should not start in the meaning first, but in the feelings it evokes just hearing those words, in the images, and rhythms carrying you along, much like a good song.
