Angele Ellis: “I lived in the dark” | In Grace Notes, Naomi Shihab Nye finds the music in poems about families and the incidents and accidents of personal history
All poetry begins in song, as Naomi Shihab Nye reminds the reader, starting with the title of her latest collection, 117 mostly brief free verse poems that like songs, are both accessible and mysterious.
Patricia Nugent: No Time for Memes
There is a current meme imploring us not to lose friends over politics. This is becoming impossible for me. I would not have been able to continue a friendship with someone who began wearing a swastika armband in the late 1930s.
Jose Padua: A Poem for Jimi Hendrix and All the Superheroes of My Youth Who Lacked the Power to Live Forever
what was really interesting
wasn’t what they could do
but what they couldn’t do
Susan Yeargin: How to keep yourself safe during expected heat waves this summer
A heat wave can pose risks for anyone who spends time outside, whether they’re runners, people who walk or cycle to work, outdoor workers or kids playing sports.
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer: Meadow
As if, with open palms,
I could pull this beauty
inside me and carry it with me
until I give it to you—
LINDSAY KOSHGARIAN: OUR NEARLY $1 TRILLION MILITARY BUDGET WON’T MAKE US SAFER
Congress is spending on the military like it’s World War III. Diverting that money to jobs, health care, and the climate would make us far safer.
Tony Gloeggler: Down by an Old Mill Where a Big Part of Your Heart Lives
…you and Jesse
have a gift. You can both stop time.
He’s autistic and you love the kid,
who’s now a man.
David Hartsough: Finding joy in resistance and prison
As she begins a 229-day prison sentence in Germany, Catholic Worker Susan Crane, age 80, talks about why she has devoted her life to resisting nuclear weapons.
Barbara Crooker: Car Hop
I made seventy-five cents an hour, plus tips. All those shiny quarters. Some went down the throat of the jukebox—96 Tears, What Becomes of the Brokenhearted, Reach Out / I’ll Be There.
Michael Simms: Politics as a Spiritual Practice
Those of us who wish to follow a spiritual path cannot ignore the malevolent policies of our government.
Margo Berdeshevsky: God Bless the Child That’s Got His Own
He says — you will let go he will let go the branch when he is
Ready I nod, yes, he says, climbing the hill from the sea
Where he has gone to wash distance and salt before it comes
Vicky Bond: How Humans Get Sick From Other Animals
The growing emergence of diseases from animals suggests that we need to rethink our reliance on animals as a food source.
Dane Cervine: Holography
this is what Jeannie’s lover felt—the empty year
reeling out of orbit, no gravity, lost
in a centerless universe blown wide
Noam Chomsky: What ChatGPT Is Really Good For
The subset of artificial intelligence known as Large Language Models can’t tell us anything about human language learning, but it excels at misleading the uninformed.
