Vox Populi

A curated webspace for Poetry, Politics, and Nature with over 6,000,000 visitors since 2014 and over 9,000 archived posts.

James Crews: After Receiving Bad News from a Friend

To offer what we can,
even when a friend lives far away,
to say: I will hold you inside myself
as you pass through this new gate.

March 12, 2026 · 28 Comments

Helen Pletts: In the Presence of Things Flying Slower in a Grey Dusk (4 Poems in English and Chinese)

Rain from the Tang dynasty has re-surged,
all feelings gather in a fine mist, and lighter still is the joy of rain as a witness
to the landscape of fear fleeing like mist up the mountainside

March 10, 2026 · 39 Comments

Ma Yongbo: Three poems for Helen Pletts in English & Chinese

No one can walk here,
save shy deer, save wind and rain,
save those invisible wings
that can gently lift the whole garden
up to the constellations.

February 10, 2026 · 22 Comments

Judith Sanders: Bubbe and Zayde Take Me to the Ice Capades

I danced past the hospital playroom
where bald children rode tricycles,
because you, my son, would get well.

December 26, 2025 · 14 Comments

Chana Bloch: A Marriage

Theirs was the one with the noisy bedsprings.
How does a child solve a riddle like that?
Scritchity-screech
—are they fighting again?

September 14, 2025 · 13 Comments

Robert Okaji: Four Poems

The nine lesions
in my brain have not yet diminished language
receptors. Nor my imagination. But
how will I know when it happens?

June 5, 2025 · 19 Comments

Sandy Solomon: Making Soup

Who would have guessed before this year
how cheerful this simple chore would feel
now that the sick room’s silence starts
beyond the swinging kitchen door.

March 3, 2025 · 15 Comments

Paul Christensen: A Diary of Winter

The cold came in silent as an owl. The fences stared out at the clenched landscape with gaping eyes, unlocked gates, a path already flattened out in anticipation of the coming snow.

January 12, 2025 · 9 Comments

Jennifer Horney: Health risks are rising in mountain areas flooded by Hurricane Helene and cut off from clean water, power and hospitals

Contaminated water is one of the leading health risks, but residents also face harm to mental health.

October 3, 2024 · 9 Comments

Video: How to Cultivate a Healthy Gut Microbiome with Food

Food for gut health: An unhealthy intestinal biome is a major contributor to heart disease and other illnesses.

March 22, 2024 · 10 Comments

Tony Gloeggler: Honestly

I’ll place a bowl of Cheez-Its 
in her lap, drop a Milk Dud 
or Jordan Almond, spoon melon 
into her mouth.

March 20, 2024 · 16 Comments

Michael Simms: Snow

her father sitting alone in his underwear
having stripped off his blackened clothes
and leaving them on the back porch,
white skin of his legs, black dust on his face

February 3, 2024 · 13 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

Cynthia Atkins: Hairbrush

He’d fall asleep on my chest, breath light as a falling leaf.
Now, he glides the bristles down my neck— He gently fluffs
the tufts, like airing the pillows.

March 15, 2023 · 14 Comments

Archives