Vox Populi

In memory of Holly  Jan 27, 1969 — Jun 4, 2026 Holly and I, both outcasts, clung to each other like life preservers.  We were in the fifth grade when we met on the playground at Huntertown Elementary in rural northeast Indiana. Our friendship was forged in the crucible of our shared abuse and powerlessness. Neither of us could have survived without the other. When we were at each other’s homes,…

It’s an early Monday morningand I’m leaning against the doorof the E train, scanning the faces of other riders. My eyes stumble on a well dressed black man sitting across the car, crying quietly, streaks making their way down his face, shoulders starting to stutter until he bends over, tries to coverhis face with his dark brown fedora.I look around, half the passengersare lost to their iPhones,…

Demonstrators from the pro-Palestine encampment on Columbia’s Campus show a banner as they barricade themselves inside Hamilton Hall, an academic building which has been occupied in past by student movements, and name it after a Palestinian child killed by the Israeli military on April 30, 2024, in New York City. ALEX KENT / GETTY IMAGES . Contemporary proponents of ‘institutional neutrality’…

From where I sit outside, mending the denimshirt he loved & I wear thin, I can’t see if — abovethe kitchen door — the clocks’ hands have cometogether now. The sun flings out all its light, yetthin shadings fade away from under the dozingdog’s paws & a softer gray lets go from my chippedmug. Even my own shadow no longer stains the shirtin my lap; & just before the afternoon comes to hazethe light…

1)I should have known better than to pursue a 27-year-old Jew from Martiniquewith a long, fine face.Compared to her smooth skin,I felt as old as a rock-covered well in the Negev Desert.2)After our third date,she posted a video of herself dancing too close to her personal trainer.A slender pink dress framed her like a masterpieceno man can own.A necklace dangled down her dark skin with stones cut…

Could the Odyssey preserve echoes of long-lost voyages beyond the Mediterranean—perhaps even across the Atlantic? A speculative discussion informed by Homeric scholarship, archaeology, and ancient literature. A plaster cast of a bust of Homer, modern copy taken from the cast in the Goethe Nationalmuseum, Weimar, which is thought to have belonged to Goethe, the original Hellenistic bust was made…

A Thank You to the Ransacker-in-Chief Consider this my deeply felt thank you to Donald Trump. Only the other day, this ancient mariner (that’s me, of course!) turned 82 years old and, in another world, I would undoubtedly have retired long ago. But — much appreciated, Donald! — not with this president in the White House. After all, I don’t have to struggle (as once upon a time) to come up with…

Tilly Norwood is white or brown or black or albino and she can play leading ladies or disgruntled neighbors or serial killers or small, adorable children or slightly demented grandmothers or politicians with ocular ticks and her eye portals are a startling shade of aquamarine, or topaz, or malachite or ruby, etc. Tilly’s cheeks become rain-slicked and shiny when the script says, “cry now”, and…

~ Running time: 3 minutes The Boots were a 1960s German beat and garage rock band from West Berlin, active from 1964 to 1968. They were heavily inspired by British Invasion blues bands like the Yardbirds. You can explore their music catalog on Spotify.

Huffy Henry hid the day,unappeasable Henry sulked.I see his point, a trying to put things over.It was the thought that they thoughtthey could do it made Henry wicked & away.But he should have come out and talked.All the world like a woolen loveronce did seem on Henry’s side.Then came a departure.Thereafter nothing fell out as it might or ought.I don’t see how Henry, priedopen for all the world to…

RETIREMENTAugust isn’t what it used to be. What’s left is Precambrian dust and glacial striations.And noise like the buzzing of prehistoric bees.It used to be a month for absorbing the sun, for staying out past curfew, long after evening had wrapped us in its muggy arms.The days were for lounging on rocks,for shedding skin. For swimming in a quarry’smilky artesian waters above drowned…

April 1965, Petersburg, VAOnce you were a velvet robe we couldwrap ourselves in, a dark tapestry tacked with stars holding us all together. But then we were in a car heading South, and the late-night DJs began to drawl, so we couldn’t tell sugar from threat. Outside our beams were bright, the trees kept to their side of the road. No car with doused lights tailed us.But O the moon—O O O the moon—…

1. My mother—in the years of her marriage, in the long days spent caring for my younger brother and me in a big yellow house along a plain midwestern highway—was deeply unhappy. Doctors diagnosed her with paranoid schizophrenia in the early 1980s, but schizophrenia was not (in my opinion) the root cause of her unhappiness. Of course, who could know? Who could know her? She was distant. Her first…

I don’t know what brings someone to the edgewhere they tell you, “This isn’t me being unhappy,I’m just beyond the point of being interestedin this world.”It has taken a long time for him to arrive at this place;you remember the start, the four-year-old boywho lost all his friends when his mother fell apartand so at the preschool clung to the chainlinkfence waiting for the time to pass until his…

but there was that moment when I, so stunned with shame,bent with the ache I had caused,went to the middle of the fieldand flattened myself to the ground,face up, arms wide, legs splayed, and I felt into the full horror of what I had wrought—never wanting to hurt anyone.And I did not die. Though perhapsparts of me died. The part that believedI could get through this lifewithout hurting anyone…

Running time: 19 minutes Carol begins a normal Valentine’s Day only to find out that her heart medication has doubled in price. Afraid, but not without hope, she sets out to find a solution. Director: Sam Shainberg Starring Brenda Cullerton as Carol To learn more about this film, including a list of the cast and crew, as well as the many awards it has won, please click here. ~ Screenshot…

Michael Simms: Bob, I loved reading What’s Possible: New and Selected Poems, just released by Slant Books, a true masterwork. One among many pleasures is seeing how consistent in subject and voice the poems are even though they were written over a period of forty years. Most poets go through a long process of finding their subjects and growing into their voices; whereas you were born, you might…