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.
Gary Fincke: Schmaltz
My mother
Said we could shimmy it off in no time,
Doing the Twist and the Mashed Potato,
The dances of the slim who’d never heard
Of real schmaltz and the terrible success
Of learning place
Baruch November: After Bracha
A blessing for just being able
to arise in early pink-blue light.
A blessing for when lightning veins
a cloud or strikes the oak into flames.
A blessing for when the earth quakes
Desne A. Crossley: O Rosie Girl
it was one thing for a white man to bed a black woman, but unthinkable that he would marry her. And it was commonplace for a black woman to be forced to open her legs to her employer or his sons. But Martha married white and returned home with the man!
Video: “Mauches” by Angele Ellis
I never learned la bella lingua except
to write you one letter in schoolgirl Italian
from college, a letter you loved so much
it fell into sharp creases
Sally Bliumis-Dunn: Purple Carrot
These are lonely times.
No sweetness lingers on the tongue
from this carrot’s purple flesh.
Video: Long Line of Ladies
This film intimately observes the months-long process of one girl, her family, and their tight-knit Karuk community as they come together to prepare for her Ihuk, the coming-of-age ceremony for girls.
Sunnivie Brydum: 11 Better Ideas for a Country in Need of Social Change
Even nations with long histories of inequality and violence carry lessons for how to move toward what might be called a more perfect union.
