Video: Grace
Sixteen-year-old Grace prepares for her baptism in the 1950’s South. When she learns she must repent before the ritual, Grace contemplates her budding romantic feelings toward her best friend, Louise.
Kathleen O’Toole: A dimmer hope
First crack of crimson
in the January morning sky
engenders such an ache, not
only for the sun’s escape
from cloud block, but ours
from winter’s grip.
Robinson Jeffers: Love the Wild Swan
I hate my verses, every line, every word.
Oh pale and brittle pencils ever to try
One grass-blade’s curve, or the throat of one bird
That clings to twig, ruffled against white sky.
Maya Sen: Why federal courts are unlikely to save democracy from Trump’s and Musk’s attacks
The Trump administration is moving much faster than courts do, or even can.
W.H. Auden: Lullaby
Lay your sleeping head, my love,
Human on my faithless arm;
Time and fevers burn away
Individual beauty from
Thoughtful children
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer: You Belong
It’s not true our hearts are our own—
they’re symbiotic as meadows in spring.
The heart exists for who grows in it.
Video: Love in the Time of Migration
Ronny and Suly are in love. The only problem is that Ronny is in the US, while Suly is in Guatemala.
William Shakespeare: Sonnets 18 & 19
Devouring Time, blunt thou the lion’s paws
And make the Earth devour her own sweet brood
George Yancy: Remember What Audre Lorde Told Us — The Oppressor Doesn’t Determine What’s True
To navigate these terrible times, we need Audre’s Lorde’s audacity: Protect the public sphere. Refuse to be silenced.
Alison Luterman: Snowy Plover
Their wild wheelings trace the shape
of wonder and grief moving inside us,
pewter, then platinum.
It goes away like that; it comes back.
It carves a black, moving river in the air.
Rebecca Gordon: King Donald
Facing the Rise of Fascism Like Fools for Freedom
Chard deNiord: The Hawk
I was gazing out this morning from my perch in Bedford,
Virginia when I heard the screech of a red-
tailed hawk in the deep, cerulean sky
above a Blue Ridge mountain in which the other-
wise perfect silence was musical
Philip Terman: Too Much Already
Among the ruins, Nasser, dark in the shadows, hands gesturing in all directions. He speaks in a measured Arabic to the backdrop of rifles and bombs.
Barbara Crooker: The Vultures
Will we
recognize the bones of our constitution after they’ve been
picked clean, or will we be too baffled to recognize their white
gleaming?
