Gwendolyn B. Bennet: Four Poems
Something of old forgotten queens
Lurks in the lithe abandon of your walk
And something of the shackled slave
Sobs in the rhythm of your talk.
Audio: Dr. Martin Luther King — Beyond Vietnam: A Time To Break Silence
A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.
Sean Sexton: Heavenward
An orange glow back-lights the sky before dawn
with approaching newness made of blue. The world
still drips from a perfect midafternoon rain arriving
yesterday to carry into dark.
Malcolm Daniel: The photography of Julia Margaret Cameron
In Cameron’s Mountain Nymph, Sweet Liberty, Miss Keene, an arresting model about whom we know nothing but her last name, stares directly at the camera (and, by extension, at the viewer), her hair loose and her eyes open wide. Filling the frame, she seems to step out of the picture.
Video: Shanti Rides Shotgun
On Manhattan’s jam-packed streets, NYC’s most iconic driving instructor prepares students for the road ahead.
Michael Simms: Serenity Park
Out of the chaos of the parrots’ desperate calls had emerged a texture of beautiful sound, and none of them would ever be lonely again.
Edna St. Vincent Millay: ‘She had a horror he would die at night’
She had a horror he would die at night.
And sometimes when the light began to fade
She could not keep from noticing how white
The birches looked and then she would be afraid
Konstantin Zhukov: Searching reporters’ homes, suing journalists and repressing citizen dissent are well-known steps toward autocracy
The Trump administration has targeted individuals and groups as domestic terrorists based on their beliefs rather than their actions.
Thomas A. Thomas: While hearing the poet
when love was blue water in a green cathedral
under a new blue sky and the water fell from
cliff stone into sun-sparkled air
Carol Moldaw: Arthritis
“Save your hands,” my mother says,
seeing me untwist a jar’s tight cap—
just the way she used to tell me
not to let boys fool around
Charles Harper Webb: Department of Discontent
The officer in charge checks my ID. “Formal
or informal complaint?” she says. When I hesitate,
she says, “Informal’s more relaxed. You speak
more softly, don’t raise your blood pressure,
can wear jeans, no tie, use contractions and slang.
Stephen Prager: Hours After US Citizen Shot Dead by ICE, JD Vance Said ‘Door-to-Door’ Operations Are Coming
“This is starting to look disturbingly like Germany in the 1930s.”
Rachel Trousdale & Charles W. Brice: Two Elegies for Renée Nicole Good
I think of long dead Germans caught in the Bardo.
Are they wagging their fingers at us?
Now you know what it felt like, they say
