Barbara Hamby: Ode to the ‘Messiah’, Thai Horror Movies, and Everything I Can’t Believe
When I decide to go to hear Handel’s Messiah in London
at the composer’s parish church, my husband says
he’d rather see a Thai horror movie, so we plan to meet later
at our favorite Moroccan lair
Ted Olson: Bob Dylan and the creative leap that transformed modern music
Sixty years ago, on Halloween Night 1964, a 23-year-old Dylan took the stage at New York City’s Philharmonic Hall. He had become a star within the niche genre of revivalist folk music. But by 1964 Dylan was building a much larger fanbase through performing and recording his own songs.
Baron Wormser: Striving with a God
In his best poems, something elemental is occurring – the clash between a lone life and the accrued verity of socialized watchfulness, the adages that are spoken without a second thought.
Darnell Arnoult: This Too Is Creation & Work
Moonlight freely wants its glory,
holy howling eyes singing
heaven’s blues.
Ma Yongbo: I Have Always Been in Love With You (English and Chinese)
Sometimes I suddenly stop on the road
feel a breeze brushing my ears
That’s you passing by
karla k. morton: Mountain Doggerel
I open night’s window
to the long song of the river—
Mike Vargo: Magical Realism — in Literature, in Life, and Online
My daughter called herself Dark White Wolf, and when I was a child, I had an imaginary companion — a second self — whom I brought to the dinner table with me. Nobody was allowed to sit in my doppelgänger’s chair.
Louise Bogan: Musician
Now with great ease, and slow,
The thumb, the finger, the strong
Delicate hand plucks the long
String it was born to know.
Vicky Bond: The Commercial Fishing Industry Is Destroying Vital Marine Ecosystems
The unsustainable practice of killing fish for human consumption not only harms them but countless other marine animals die as “unintended” bycatch in reckless fishing operations or lose their lives to the fishing industry’s widespread ocean pollution and habitat destruction, which is damaging our oceans beyond recovery.
Alfred Corn: Naskeag
Once a day the rocks, with little warning—
not much looked for even by the spruce
and fir ever at attention above—
fetch up on these tidal flats and bars.
Derrick Z. Jackson: Republicans Line Up for the Real Scam on Renewable Energy
For all that President-elect Donald Trump trashed renewable energy on the stump, much of his ranting may very well become a murmur when he returns to the Oval Office.
Nidia Hernández: Templanza | Fortitude
turtles
blend their swimming with the sea
Abby Zimet: Deny, Defend, Depose: They Eat Off Your Family Member’s Grave
Exposing “the rotten core of American health care,” the shooting of United Health’s CEO/ mafia kingpin sparked a flash flood of long-simmering fury at the “legalized murder practiced by all … Continue reading
Pablo Otavalo: Scorched Earth, Illinois
the bears never seemed to wander
far, they just milled around town, knocked down
a few garbage cans and waited to be brought back
to their pens
