Vox Populi

Quit putting these young Black people on the highest of our branches.We were not built to support your violence, your hatred or is it fear?We’re tired of the absence of evidence, the fake official photographOur trunks defamed & there is a medical examiner drugged with fear.Our roots are deeper than this new world carnival, bleached white hands,Error deficit white reports, dawn and another body…

Message in a Bottle I close in on facts fine as sugarpoured from a bottle labeled salt,comprehend nothing. I hear a knock, then another,go to the door but no one’s there.I unlock it and leave it open.When the bottle’s empty a note pops out, its paper faded as the globe on my desk. It’s unreadable. I spin the globe to see where it stops. It rolls off the desk and hits the door, which closes so…

Zombie-like we stumble through the mud, and all I can think of is my cat. I wasn’t sure whether it was better to put her down before the Russians came, but then I decided to let her find her own fate. I am not God. I mourn her loss and the comfort she gave me when she snuggled up beside me in my small bed. Will she be cold? Will she be hungry? Will she be lost? Will she have been shot and eaten?…

A teacher in summer may be a curious thing to non-teachers. I’ve spent my teacher life fending off—well, I gave up exhausting myself further with arguments—“Teaching must be great, you get your summer’s off!” At the end of July, I’m tired, my right ear is like a washing machine with tinnitus egged on by stress, anxiety, and high blood pressure. I’ve been monitoring emails from school wanting me…

I want to be lifted upBy some great white bird unknown to the police.— James Wright My eight-year-old niece attendsa Spanish-infused school in Minneapolis. Hola! they say.Puedo ver un ave. “Los colibríes besan las flores,”she tells me on the phone. “My friends are scared.”“Are you?” “A little,” she says. “Can I sleep in your bed?”she asks her mom. She hears the helicopters.Sometimes sucks…

Three Great Powers Rising and Falling on a Planet Itself Distinctly in Decline It wasn’t so very long ago that there were three great powers reasonably ascendant on planet Earth. I’m thinking, of course, about the greatest power of that moment, the United States, but also Russia (in the wake of the Soviet Union’s collapse), and a distinctly rising China. In the future, there may only be one — at…

Yay for usI saidAnd let my temple dropTo my son’s shoulderOpening like a boulder of lightTo cradle meAs we spiraledInto our desert flightSoaked in starsOur game lips liftedDrinkingThe hopeful milkFalling in timeWith the haunted restCraving a thrill rideTo forget the never-ending deadlyThe ailing airless nightLet us tumbleLike rocketsBack to earthAs we knew itI saidLet us speed alongThis lost…

For centuries, people have dreamed of undoing Babel. Sci-fi novelists envisioned universal translators, and linguists devised international languages, all in pursuit of a world where one person could speak and another could understand, regardless of where either was born. Artificial intelligence appears to be taking humanity one step closer toward that goal. AI-powered tools are already being…

Translated by Coleman Barks This being human is a guest house.Every morning a new arrival.A joy, a depression, a meanness,some momentary awareness comesas an unexpected visitor.Welcome and entertain them all!Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,who violently sweep your houseempty of its furniture,still, treat each guest honorably.He may be clearing you outfor some new delight.The dark thought,…

Somewhere north of Kansas City, my father disappeared in himself as he often didthen returned and noticed the blacktop rolling throughthe roiling center of America which he lovedwith unquestioning ardor. In the long journey awayfrom my father, I’ve often rememberedthe way he drove in a tranceand suddenly wokesurprised to be in his life, and I promised myselfto be here, wherever here isWe were…

Lifestyle is on again We don’t want to watch it The figure Trump drew for Epstein’s birthday card first had to step out of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s wallpaperWhen the last cis-man on earth tried to write about “big girls” it came out “ten things to say to a dead woman” thighs or melons on a conveyor beltlooked, to a poetry grad student, like breastsand the world did not split openSTOP WRITING…

A poor diet now outranks smoking as the leading cause of death [on the planet, as well as specifically] in the United States. In the U.S., the #1 killer of Americans is the American diet. So, if diet is humanity’s #1 killer, then obviously it’s the #1 thing taught in medical school, right? Sadly, “medical students around the world [are] poorly trained in nutrition.” It’s not that medical students…

Call the roller of big cigars,The muscular one, and bid him whipIn kitchen cups concupiscent curds.Let the wenches dawdle in such dressAs they are used to wear, and let the boysBring flowers in last month’s newspapers.Let be be the finale of seem.The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.Take from the dresser of deal,Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheetOn which she embroidered fantails…

Blue bottle glass in between the ties in the train yard, the meadowlark’s yellow breast crested with black. Strands of barbed wire hang loosely between posts that resemble failed trees, knot holed and grain ribbed. One calf is so adept at escaping the fence that it wears a forked tree branch fastened between shoulders and skull. One end is already through the barbs, the other is gouging a…

Reflecting pool before and after Trump (Facebook) . When things don’t go well for President Trump, his usual response is to search for someone or something to blame. Rigged elections, weaponized prosecutions, and the deep state are some of his favorite targets. So when his plan to renovate Washington’s iconic Reflecting Pool turned into a fiasco, it was not surprising that he went back to a…

President Donald Trump speaks in the Oval Office of the White House, Friday, July 24, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Rod Lamkey, Jr.) ~~~ Gaslighting is a form of psychological manipulation where an abuser or manipulator repeatedly denies facts, twists the truth, or invents scenarios. The goal is to make the victim doubt their own memory, perception of reality, or sanity. Over time, victims…

My mind keens toward the day,hovers between sleep and wake.Limbs begin to stir,dreams turn vivid and chaotic: I run into people not seen for years,show up in unfamiliar homes,return to previous lives, converse with the dead in many languages,wrestle with angels and demons,the onslaught of regrets.Things I forgot to do crystallize:who to call, who to console,the picture that needs a frame,the…