Vox Populi

A curated webspace for Poetry, Politics, and Nature with over 20,000 daily subscribers and over 8,000 archived posts.

Matthew J. Parker: AI is Stupidity’s BFF

My real life encounters with AI, however, mostly on plagiarized student papers, have proven that when it comes to inventive and even fantastical falsehoods, today’s AI not only surpasses our current president, but is in fact unwittingly in league with him. 

October 31, 2025 · 10 Comments

Matthew J. Parker: How Courage, Kindness, and Creative Iconoclasm Can Counter the Tramp of Fascist Feet

I’m alarmed by this new wave of attacks on our institutions.

August 27, 2025 · 2 Comments

Matthew J. Parker: The Continuing Fallacy of Our Word Salad Sandwiches

I shot up heroin for 25 years and never had a problem. I shot up fentanyl once and it almost killed me.

July 23, 2025 · 8 Comments

Matthew J. Parker: Cancer Dancers

I met Gerenith in 2006. Found her on a dating website that featured women from Cali, Colombia, aka the Salsa Capital of the World.

May 16, 2025 · 11 Comments

Matthew J. Parker: Pardon Me

The reason for the assault was absurd – an imagined slight over a game of cutthroat pinochle we had played earlier that day.

March 3, 2025 · 4 Comments

Matthew J. Parker: Prison Reform Envisioned by a Convicted Felon

I’ve had a lot of things done to me in both jail and prison, but coddling was never one of them. Yet in the late 1980s and 1990s, I heard this word used continually to describe prisons

August 26, 2024 · 10 Comments

Matthew J. Parker: You Be the Judge

Can sending a poor person to prison and fining him excessively also be construed as a violation of equal protection, especially when the rich can buy their voting rights back upon release?

March 8, 2024 · 2 Comments

Matthew J. Parker: The Hamas T-Shirt Fan Club

On October 17th, just ten days after Hamas massacred over 1,400 Israelis, an email on our faculty listserv announced that, on the following day, there would be a national student … Continue reading

January 23, 2024 · 11 Comments

Matthew J. Parker: One of Those Years

They had found a body in Phoenix, she said, and the cops were convinced it was John. But the body had no tattoos, and my mom had convinced herself that John, like my younger brother Mark and I, had at least one tattoo. I, however, knew better, and told her so. 

November 28, 2023 · 2 Comments

Matthew J. Parker: Ban All Books But Mine

Ron DeSantis is doing a Model Press Conference with Florida high schoolers at P.S. 47, aka Our Lady of Stand Your Ground Middle School in Panacea.

September 16, 2023 · 9 Comments

Matthew J. Parker: Tree Huggers’ Last Stand

Our backyard in Connecticut was bordered by a nature preserve, of sorts – 422 acres of wilderness camouflaging an ammunition dump.

August 13, 2023 · 9 Comments

Matthew J. Parker: A Junkie By Any Other Name

I was a junkie for 20-odd years, ten of which I spent locked up – one fed beef and four (Arizona) state, all drug-related. To feed my habit, I chose to shoplift. A lot.

June 27, 2023 · 6 Comments

Matthew J. Parker: The Shine On her Shoes

With another Memorial Day upon us, I again find myself pondering its magnitude, which invariably brings me back to 2016, when President Obama met Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial on May 27.

May 27, 2023 · 8 Comments

Matthew J. Parker: Educating Girls | An Earth-Saving Enterprise

Educating girls is a critical means of heading off climate change.

March 22, 2023 · 6 Comments

Archives