I seek and desire,
Even as the wind
That travels the plain
And stirs in the bloom
Of the apple-tree.
I wander through life,
With the searching mind
That is never at rest,
Till I reach the shade
Of my lover’s door.
[I seek and desire], Sappho, translated from the ancient Greek by Bliss Carman
In company
we spoke in code,
in inklings
without ink.
Our eyes alone
let slip the ache—
like phantom scribbles on
the heart’s blank page.
[In company], Ulayya bint al-Mahdi, translated from the Arabic by Yasmine Seale
I keep his name
from everyone, but to my soul
I babble on and on
about this crazy passion.
How I long
for some deserted place
where I could shout his name!
[I keep his name], Ulayya bint al-Mahdi, translated from the Arabic by Yasmine Seale
Howard Erker, Bobby Seale Checks Food Bags, March 31, 1972. Oakland Museum of California.
Black Community Survival Conference Rally at Greenman Field, March 28-31, 1972. KPIX Eyewitness News.
“To serve the people”, Philly Partisan, 2017.
We were dancing—it must have
been a foxtrot or a waltz,
something romantic but
requiring restraint,
rise and fall, precise
execution as we moved
American Smooth, Rita Dove
The Party, the Protest : Kay Gabriel and the Nightboat School of Poets, by Anahid Nersessian (Bookforum)
“Gabriel’s new book, Perverts, exemplifies the new poetry’s distinguishing features without being reducible to a narrow patch of typicals. It is queer and leftist, urbane, elegant but bawdy, erudite but steeped in popular culture, and passionately invested in forms of social life that feel distinctly contemporary—the party, the protest—but whose real history is ancient, even primordial.”
where, with a resonant clarity,
we fathom fortitude … steady
a place marked with an impulse
found and held within
the fold … honey
green … the color
of my quotidian space
Now, as then, the grace
Of heaven seems holding earth in its embrace.
10. WE WANT LAND, BREAD, HOUSING, EDUCATION, CLOTHING, JUSTICE, PEACE AND PEOPLE’S COMMUNITY CONTROL MODERN TECHNOLOGY.
a feeling he could not name but was disquieted by—longing? (Bel Canto, Ann Patchett)
Lutz Bacher. (… we don’t know the California-born artist’s real name, nor where her public-facing persona came from, but we do know this lifelong game of hide-and-seek was deliberate, an act of authorial resistance that framed her 50-year oeuvre)
Accordingly, the Court finds that the Constitution of these United States trumps this administration’s detention of petitioner Adrian Conejo Arias and his minor son, L.C.R. The Great Writ and release from detention are GRANTED pursuant to the attached Judgment.
Judge Biery, a federal judge in Texas’ Western District, granted their petition for a writ of habeas corpus. NYTimes annotates.
… But still
I buy a pack at Kingston airport mall—
jade confetti in a see-through sack.
That night I stew the leaves to make a tea—
to see her there, to plant her here with me.
Guinea Hen Weed, Hannah lowe