Vox Populi

A curated webspace for Poetry, Politics, and Nature. Over 16,000 daily subscribers. Over 7,000 archived posts.

Diana Raab: Lessons from My Grandmother

I was ten years old the morning I found my grandmother dead.

April 29, 2023 · 4 Comments

Jennifer Franklin: As Antigone

I will not walk away.
The moment the nurse
pressed your splotched
body into my arms,
your needs fixed my fate.

April 19, 2023 · 8 Comments

David Kirby: More Than This

you three must be thirsty,
come in and get a drink, and the cowboy says okay,
but what is this place, and the guy says it’s heaven

April 11, 2023 · 14 Comments

Barbara Edelman: White-Throated Sparrow

Though she is dead
she is buying me a car
and this buying makes her happy

April 5, 2023 · 9 Comments

David Hassler: Intensive Care

Children under the age of fourteen weren’t allowed in the ICU. I was eleven, and my brother was thirteen, but no nurse or doctor was going to stop us from seeing our mother.

March 12, 2023 · 7 Comments

Valerie Bacharach: Chaos

There is no word for parents who have lost a child. Our language is chaotic. We are not widowed or orphaned. We are without, we are incomplete.

March 10, 2023 · 16 Comments

Nneka M. Okona: The Imposition of Black Grief

For Black people in the United States, grief and loss are intertwined with our very being. Our ancestors knew the trauma of loss intimately…

March 2, 2023 · 4 Comments

James Crews: A Few Things I Have Learned

Watching birds will save you on a daily basis—the shaggy barred owl clinging to a pine branch with its deadly claws, eyes lazing in the glaze of a winter morning, head swiveling back and forth.

February 28, 2023 · 5 Comments

Bhikshuni Vasetthi: Oh, My Heart

I called out to my grief and drew it toward me.
I held my grief and gently rocked it.
Shh, I said. There, there. There, there.

January 13, 2023 · 4 Comments

Video: The Ref

A referee struggles to maintain control over a 2nd grade basketball game.

December 10, 2022 · Leave a comment

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer: The Prayers

I had not imagined drowning 
was the way to reach the shore.

November 27, 2022 · 17 Comments

Elizabeth Gargano: Why We Should Try Talking to the Dead

After my father’s death, my mother kept talking to him.

November 18, 2022 · 8 Comments

Neil Shepard: Local Freeze

Flat lines of black clouds 
rolled over the Everglades, pelting the land with cold rain, 
then, briefly, almost impossibly, hail, over the wetlands and dredged 
fields, reminding us how fragile the grapefruits and oranges.

November 15, 2022 · 5 Comments

Walt Whitman: Come Up from the Fields Father

Open the envelope quickly,
O this is not our son’s writing, yet his name is sign’d,
O a strange hand writes for our dear son, O stricken mother’s soul!

October 21, 2022 · 1 Comment

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