“Sitting close to the center, not very high in the branches, / I heard it hitting the high leaves, and I was happy, // watching it happen without it happening to me.” —Marie Howe, “The Copper Beech” www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48561/...

When poets debate whether metaphor itself perpetuates harm, every image becomes an ethical choice. @philipmetres.bsky.social's DISPATCHES FROM THE LAND OF ERASURE captures these heated conversations, changing how we approach poems that engage cultural difference. press.umich.edu/Books/D/Disp...

Grateful for this work and the work of the work

Nobody who voted to confirm RFK is fit to hold public office

Host: There are new calls this morning for RFK Jr.'s resignation, and those calls coming from inside HHS itself. More than 1,000 current and former HHS workers are making this demand in a letter released this morning. They say his leadership has "put the health of all Americans at risk"

Concerned that we are losing the necessary ratio. 15% of teachers/faculty should be irretrievably strange eccentrics. Every learning experience should have some element where in later life you can reflect with former classmates about how bizarre at least one (1) class per year was.

Old Soviet joke for today: A man walks into a newsstand every day, looks around, and leaves. After a long time of this, the owner says “Can I help you find something?” “I’m looking for the obituaries.” “The obituaries are in the back of the newspaper, comrade.” “Not the one I’m looking for.”

The NRA buys off Congress. No action on guns. The oil industry buys off Congress. No action on climate. Insurance companies buy off Congress. No action on health care. The list goes on and on. Money in politics is the root of our dysfunction.

Starbucks’ CEO made 6,666x more than the company's median employee in 2024. This was the widest CEO-to-Worker pay gap in the entire S&P 500. Remember this before you order your next pumpkin spice latte.

On settler colonialism, the illusion of progress, and what actually resulted from the Oslo Accords.

“When I first arrived in Belfast, I saw both Palestinian and Israeli flags, but in different neighborhoods—the Palestinian ones in Irish nationalist areas, and Israeli ones in Protestant loyalist areas.” @philipmetres.bsky.social on Northern Irish solidarity with Palestine.

"Only when the last tree has been cut, the last river has been poisoned & the last fish been caught will they realize that they can't eat money" old Cree proverb

In a small town in County Cork, Ireland, a monument stands in appreciation to the American Choctaw Indian Tribe. Although impoverished, shortly after being forced to walk the Trail of Tears, the tribe somehow gathered $170 to send to Ireland for famine relief in 1847 [Historic Vids]

Find this film. Watch this film. It’s as great a scripted film as you will see this decade. It shows at Telluride this weekend. Seek it out. Like NoOther Land, the doc which won an Oscar last year, the distribution in the US will be impeded. Fight that. Support it. deadline.com/2025/08/osca...

Texas is a majority-minority state, yet Republicans drew maps that make white votes carry 2-3 times more political power than Black or Hispanic votes. That’s what gerrymandering does: it cracks and packs communities of color so their growing numbers translate into less representation.

By @mosabbluesky.bsky.social: "This boy is Abdullah Abu Zarqa(5...)... Abdullah was a cancer patient who missed his treatment... because of #Israel ’s inhumane siege. A few days he was evacuated. Today he passed away in a hospital in Turkey. It was too late for him." www.threads.com/@mosab_abuto...

Three hours ago, an Israeli quadcopter dropped a grenade on a group of people in Shujaeeya neighborhood in Gaza City. It killed a woman named Yousra Abu al-Kass. Note: Yousra lost her husband and two children in previous air strikes.

we used to build household shrines to Going On The Computer and it's no coincidence that as we abandoned these we started straying further from god's light

U.S. Becomes First Country To Recognize Mega-Israel — theonion.com/u-s-becomes-...

Ireland could soon ban all trade with illegal settlements, but is being bullied by Washington to give up. Sign the petition — and show Ireland the world is behind this! action.eko.org/a/ireland-pa...

This should wake up everyone who still thinks we might squeak by. And JFC @harvard.edu listen up. Your *US students* are starting to flee abroad. Not just yr international students. And dear United States: this is the way to totally reach yr end. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

I am finally home again and taking a week or two to catch up on everything. Good to see this piece by @philipmetres.bsky.social at Literary Hub: lithub.com/if-god-were-...

My friend Phil Metres has been making the world make more sense through poetry and literature for a long time now. This moving piece on Chekhov is just the latest installment. I needed this. lithub.com/if-god-were-...

“If God were like Chekhov, I would be consoled.” @philipmetres.bsky.social on Gaza, wildfires, and the privileges of misery.

Hunger is reportedly surging in Gaza as the enclave of nearly two million people remains cut off from aid. U.N. and local health officials attribute hundreds of deaths in recent weeks to malnutrition or people dying while trying to get food from aid distribution points. (via @cfr.org)

Frank McCourt, Irish-American writer (𝑨𝒏𝒈𝒆𝒍𝒂'𝒔 𝑨𝒔𝒉𝒆𝒔) died this day in 2009. “The master says it’s a glorious thing to die for the Faith and Dad says it’s a glorious thing to die for Ireland and I wonder if there’s anyone in the world who would like us to live.” #booksky #writingcommunity #auhors

I think this is the most horrifying post I have ever read.

READ: Israel is building aparthied tunnels that Palestinians will be required to pass through in the heart of the West Bank, making large parts of the occupied territory accessible only to Israelis. The aim is to remove the Palestinian presence around Jerusalem. mondoweiss.net/2025/06/isra...

Breaking: per FEMA sources Kristi Noem was responsible for THREE DAY DELAY in deploying search-and-rescue in Texas Fire her. Blood on her hands.

“The New York Times collaborated with a white nationalist eugenicist hacker and agreed to keep his identity a secret to publish a Zohran Mamdani hit piece” is a way bigger story than “18 year old Zohran Mamdani ticked ‘African American’ on his Columbia application because he was a citizen of Uganda”

❤️🤍💙

It’s costing taxpayers $450/M annually & Alligator Alcatraz concentration camp is already flooding. Imagine a hurricane. People are going to die. There’s always enough money to hurt folks, but when it comes to public transit, low-income housing, schools, or public healthcare, “Sorry, we’re broke.”

“Tasted a little tear gas— tasted like fascism”

Israel has long used undercover forces posing as Palestinians to sow strife. Today, it is using this strategy again in Gaza in the form of the gangs taking control over humanitarian aid. The goal is to fragment and dismember Palestinian society. mondoweiss.net/2025/06/isra... #Palestine #Israel

they never miss

412 academics, diplomats, former ministers, + lawyers send 🇨🇦 PM @markcarneyforpm.bsky.social letter re: Israel’s Gaza genocide demanding Canada “do everything in its power to stop these atrocities and support efforts to bring those responsible to account,” including sanctions + end to free trade.

No US writer or publisher has ever received the IPA's Prix Voltaire award, bc, well, the US used to believe in this silly thing called the First Amendment. Today, alas, it's time to bring this prize home, and no one deserves it more than Michel Moushabeck. internationalpublishers.org/six-publishe...

In an online discussion yesterday, I was asked what I like most about editing. My answer? I too often find myself speechless, so what could be better than finding others who aren't? None speak more clearly about the unspeakable today than Huda Fakhreddine: modernismmodernity.org/forums/posts...

Israel killed 75 people today—human beings with names, stories, and families. Our people aren’t numbers. Our people are precious; their lives matter, and their deaths aren’t trivial footnotes deemed not newsworthy. Shame on the west for allowing this daily slaughter to continue.

Read by poets TRACI BRIMHALL (@tracibrimhall.bsky.social), PHILIP METRES (@philipmetres.bsky.social), DIANNELY ANTIGUA (@diannelyantigua.bsky.social), and KELLI RUSSELL AGODON (@kelliagodon.bsky.social).

Did you know that Philip Metres's (@philipmetres.bsky.social) FUGITIVE/REFUGE has two covers? One is on the front of the book, and the second is on its interior—a printing first for us! We are able to manifest an author's poetic vision because of your support. Please give today: bit.ly/3Z7VsvM.

Pope was dope

The only word for this—and this info is furnished by mainstream Israeli coverage—is *genocide.* In one month: - 1,691 people murdered in Gaza, 595 of them are children, 308 women and 105 elderly - 2 million Gazans on the brink of death by starvation/ disease www.haaretz.com/middle-east-...

The thing about the violent policing/regulation/punishment of migration in the US: Yes, it has absolutely been a long-term, racist bipartisan project. Yes, that project has escalated quantitatively and qualitatively in the last three months.

“Almost every night since October 2023, even during his hospitalization, Pope Francis made a daily phone call to the only Catholic parish in the Gaza Strip to check on their safety.” @mehdirhasan.bsky.social on how Pope Francis was, to the horror of conservative Christians, a social justice pope.

At the Miami Krome ICE prison, detainees are held 16 hours with “tight chains around their wrists, chests, and hips on buses outside the facilities without water, food, or access to bathrooms. Guards instructed them to urinate or defecate inside the buses.” english.elpais.com/usa/2025-04-...