Jason Baldinger: to hold back the water
you know john hardy
was a desperate little man
Jason Baldinger: a people’s history of williamson west virginia
instead we holed up
in a burned-out department store
rechristened junk shop
sifting boxes of ten cent
black and white photos
Mel Packer: Hots and a Cot
Payphone only cost a dime
in 1963 Wickenburg Arizona
where I had bedded down
courtesy of the local police
Audio: Jack Gilbert reads his poems
Reading poems from The Great Fires, some of them in earlier versions, Jack Gilbert looks back on the loves and solitudes of a life lived acutely, seen in terms of the Pittsburgh steel mills where he worked as a youth
Mel Packer: The Bend on the River Road from Homestead
A falling down, bullet-pocked sheet metal wall
Once erected to mark the edges of the
South Side Jones and Laughlin steel mill
Mike Males: Why Conservative Parts of the U.S. Are So Angry
Republican America is poorer, more violent, and less healthy than Democratic America. But Republicans’ blame is misplaced.
Michael Simms: The Pecan Grove
he taught me
the geometry of carpentry
the mysteries
of plumbing, told me
dirty jokes
Tony Gloeggler: Working Class Heroes
My father opened the trunk,
tossed me my glove with a worn
hardball tucked in its pocket, eased
into a catcher’s crouch as I paced
60 feet away.
Susan Kelly-DeWitt: Maybe I Have No Ideas
Eating a turkey sub from the school cafeteria
I suddenly think of the blonde woman
whose marriage is falling apart and the dark
circles under her eyes
Tom Engelhardt: Beyond Our Control
It was summer almost half a century ago when I got into that Volkswagen van and began my trip across country with Peter, a photographer friend. I was officially doing so as a reporter for a small San Francisco news service, having been sent out to tap the mood of the nation in a politically fraught moment.
Robert Walicki: Two Poems
I’m stumbling out of the dark and back down again,
winding out of the rutted valleys of the Mon,
ass crack of the world and broken roads…
Robert Walicki: Storm
It’s 40 degrees, and windy enough to lift us
off the edge of the earth, and this hospital roof,
where we drop the heads of metal snakes down stacks,
next to exhaust vents carrying the breath of the dying
Jason Baldinger: Résumé
apparently just to live
just to experience life
is not an acceptable trade
Jason Baldinger: The Hymn at the End
this fucking game is rigged
give your soul, you will be asked for more
eat shit, you will be asked to eat more
repeat until you’re too old to care, then please die
