Doug Anderson: Prayer for Paul
The fist that held your heart releases, the hot knife of your shame turns to water, the kernels of blackened corn by which you counted your imagined crimes, are carried … Continue reading
Jose Padua: My Definition of a Boombastic Poetry Style
Going up to bed early on the night before his first day of school for the year our four year old son asks, “Is Daddy coming up too?” and my … Continue reading
John Samuel Tieman: The Art
To honor Lawrence Ferlinghetti on his 96th birthday, I send along this poem about poems. i I’ve never written a poem that said what I meant one means as much … Continue reading
John Cheever: In Town for Lunch
In town for lunch. The air-conditioning, the smell of perfume and gin, the attentions of the headwaiter, the real and unreal sense of haste, importance, and freedom that clings to … Continue reading
Video: The Lady Lifers — A moving song from women in prison for life
The ten women in this chorus have all been sentenced to life in prison. They share a moving song about their experiences — one that reveals their hopes, regrets and … Continue reading
Doug Anderson: Walt Whitman at the Huntington Malls along Walt Whitman Avenue
. I celebrate myself even amid this sheet-rocked temple of kitsch, even in the asphalt tributaries of traffic in which giant Bentleys bumble like Junebugs through the lesser Hondas of … Continue reading
Jose Padua: These Down and Out Days in the Land of Everything
You can tell me all you know about love and glue, how body parts fit and rub, wrap around each other like leafy vines, or of hurricane winds blowing out … Continue reading
Doug Anderson: Belchertown
. This old half-mad woman who pushes an empty baby carriage up and down the sidewalk in Belchertown. I realized I’ve never looked in her face. It is unbearable. All … Continue reading
Vanessa German: Just in Case
i would hide you. if you needed it. i would. i would come for you. with whatever everything that i had and have. i’d cut the fruit for you. i’d … Continue reading
Jose Padua: The Wayward Path to all the Mystic Revelations and Revolutions of the Soul
Walking down New Street in Staunton, Heather, Maggie, Julien, and I are in a line, and lurching toward us are three big guys in big coats, big baggy pants, snapback … Continue reading
Video: Interview with Pema Chodron
Bill Moyers interviews the legendary Buddhist teacher and author Pema Chodron. Ani Pema Chödrön was born Deirdre Blomfield-Brown in 1936, in New York City. She attended Miss Porter’s School in … Continue reading
Sharon Doubiago: Mass Execution of Aboriginal Children of the Mohawk Residential School, Brantford, Ontario, 1943
. when you were five when you were kidnapped from your family and imprisoned in Kamloops when I was two when the Nazis when Babi Yar when I was five … Continue reading
Video: Lucille Clifton reads “Come Celebrate with Me” and “The Killing of the Trees”
Lucille Clifton (1936–2010) reads “Come Celebrate with Me” and “The Killing of the Trees.” These are the first two of 108 videos of Clifton available sequentially on YouTube. .
Leslie Anne Mcilroy: Irreparable
This is how the heart breaks. Never fast. Always rust. Tears and a metal-like sorrow, eyes drawn back to before, more like a heavy, yawning yoke. . This is how … Continue reading
