History & Politics

in the DMZ ravines north of the Kaesong wastes edging
south of the perfect ruler’s pink and prisoned paradisethere is a climate paying no attention to us where cranes
repopulate serpentine deltas

Every morning opening the newspaper, I am faced
with the thin line that divides disaster and deprivation
from a world of luminous wealth. Tuesday, January 29th,
for instance, bodies, many of them children, lie on the ground
They drowned in the canal trying to escape a weapons depot fire
and explosion in Lagos. Their heads are twisted in straw and dust
near the feet of on-lookers whose cries we cannot hear

This is how the story begins: a touch, a bump, a hot mouth,
jostled skin in an elevator, escalation, …

These are your stones, assembled in matchbox and tin,
collected from roadside, culvert, and viaduct,
battlefield…

Mike Sonksen on the Los Angeles fires and what it means to love a city in danger.

evidence     is
sustenance
     is
support
     is
the law...

1
listen carefully—there is land or there is water,
and a time where
you may mistake one for another.
there…

a•ver•y (ā ver'ē), n. dark(iss) ¹blk-male chile foundate(id) in luv unlimit(id) fuc(k) anthem(s). ²jee…

At last I’m taking off this coat,
      this black coat of a country
      that I swore for years was mine,
      that I wore more out of habit
      than design.
      Born...

This love dares not speak its name
in some states
until your eyes say it
on a beach in Ft. Lauderdale…

I: My beloved is called an inconceivable beast, a spectacle diagnosed with teratoid genitalia, a chaos…

Violeta Orozco on the US presidential election, leaving Mexico, and her connection to deep time.

& even when we said we were alone there was [       ] noise on the radio & there was [       ] noise in the car & there was [       ] noise all over the...

Tyler Mills on the truth, how to love a cockroach, and her grandfather's silence about the bomb.

Studies suggest How may I help you officer? is the single most disarming thing to say and not What's…

late, in aqua and ermine, gardenias
scaling her left sleeve in a spasm of scent,
her gloves white, her…

Un club nocturno no hace un verano
Mas creo en el perreo
Eterno recreo
En la agitación de la masa crítica…