Bart Plantenga: A Transsexual, a Chainsaw & a Soiled Toilet
I will always be a stranger who never feels at home Eugene O’Neill . Let me begin by saying that nothing is as it seems and, in this case that … Continue reading
Sarah Bilston: Breaking Up Families? America Looks Like a Dickens Novel
It’s 2018, but it sure feels like 1834. ‘Please sir, may I have some more?’ James Mahoney’s illustration for chapter one of Dickens’s ‘Adventures of Oliver Twist.’ (Image: Public domain) … Continue reading
Andrena Zawinski: Twilit Sonnet
In twilight’s dusky backstreets and muted alleys, the dispossessed huddle for the evening in boxes or sleeping bags, under freeways, at doorways, inside storage bins. They retreat to the … Continue reading
John Samuel Tieman: From “Ghetto Hawk — The Diary of Publius”
11/6 I held Sam after class today. He stared out the window and cried. He tells me that he just wants to go home. We discuss his behavior. Sam … Continue reading
Jose Padua: Self-Portrait in the Form of a Chalk Outline on the Concrete Belly of America
Jose Padua is a dish best served cold with onions, mushrooms and tomatoes in a light broth and accompanied by a rich lager with subtle aftertones of lemon. Jose Padua … Continue reading
Patricia A. Nugent: Rush to Judgment
She shuffles up to me on the sidewalk, paper cup in hand. She speaks so softly, I can’t understand what she’s saying. I ask her to repeat it. “I’m homeless. … Continue reading
Video: Lakota in America
. Genevieve Iron Lightning is a young Lakota dancer on the Cheyenne River Reservation, one of the poorest communities in the US. Unemployment, addiction, alcoholism, and suicide are all challenges … Continue reading
Susan Sailer: In Welch
I’m trying to reach Superior, pull in to an old gas station in southern West Virginia. In the office a man sits on a high stool. I ask him … Continue reading
Arlene Weiner: Poverty Festival
It probably shows a poverty of imagination that when I misread New York Poetry Festival as New York Poverty Festival I couldn’t imagine how to celebrate poverty, even though I’ve … Continue reading
Video: The Curse and the Jubilee
. Directed by Ivete Lucas and Otis Lee, The Curse and the Jubilee is an intimate, arresting portrait of the cursed Appalachian mining town of Ivanhoe, Virginia. The film captures the … Continue reading
Marc Jampole: New Kansas law picks the pockets of the poor
New Kansas law picks the pockets of the poor while humiliating them in the process. When Republicans support or pass a law to address a non-problem, they usually have an … Continue reading →