Molly Fisk: Suffer No Fools
I woke in the dark
and watched light rise up
behind the trees, pale gray
to a backlit lemon yellow
turning gold and unlikely
blue, the colors blossoming
Sean Sexton: Not
Not the listless woods these days,
their ongoing summer song
same as the year-round sound in my head.
Robert Frost: A Servant to Servants
My father’s brother wasn’t right. They kept him
Locked up for years back there at the old farm.
I’ve been away once – yes, I’ve been away.
The State Asylum.
Sean Sexton: Planting Aeschynomene Seed
It pours from a muslin sack like sunlight
through a cracked window shade, fifty pounds
to a metal washtub, old as your footsteps.
Linda Blaskey: Two Poems
The air I take in feels thin, ragged, and rough against the walls of my lungs.
This neighbor to the south of us uses a .22 long rifle.
So does the neighbor to the north.
Dane Cervine: Holography
this is what Jeannie’s lover felt—the empty year
reeling out of orbit, no gravity, lost
in a centerless universe blown wide
Sean Sexton: Hold What You Got
Mayhem, butchery, and sheer witlessness
have grown acute with time and become the order of things.
Frogs creak in brief aubade
Video: Skin & Bone
A drifter begins suffering horrifying visions after taking a job on a secluded farm.
Naomi Shihab Nye: Little Farmer
how right he was about slowness,
the path of sunlight through leaves,
how dirt has always befriended me,
Video: Nancy Isenberg – White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America
Marginalized as a class, white trash have always been at or near the center of major political debates over the American identity.
Paul Christensen: The Cornhole Tournament
What happens when a large segment of a population finds itself displaced, bullied off the bench?
Sean Sexton: Hillside Equipment Auction Yard Outside Dothan, Alabama
I’m the wretch the song’s about
Gary Fincke: After War News
The moon, lately, was a celebrity, full
and a few miles closer than usual, enough
to bring three neighbors outside near midnight.
Katey Lauer: How to develop movement candidates and win rural governing power
In elections, we are facing setbacks locally and more broadly. A bold new experiment in West Virginia offers lessons for long-term success.
