"I'm speaking to you, America...You can't build a highway over every gap you see. You can't make a world by churning out a sidewalk. You don't even know the story you're trying to write." Elizabeth Willis, Liontaming in America

The very facts of the world are a poem. Light is turned to sugar. Salamanders find their way to ancestral ponds followingi magnetic lines radiating from the earth. The saliva of grazing buffalo cause the grass to grow taller...Aren't these stories we should all know? Robin Wall Kimmerer

Last night Bhante Pannakara brought Aloka to his talk when people for the dog. I thought this is like when therapists bring therapy dogs. America is like a big facility housing distressed, fearful, troubled people. The monks are bringing emergency medicine. Also last night, Bad Bunny had a word.

America now is like one of the Southern towns run by Klansmen "law enforcement." The only song running through my head is John Brown's Body / Battle Hymn of the Republic. Minneapolis is the front line of a civil war that never ended.

“It was the bumble bee and the butterfly who survived, not the dinosaur.” Meridel Le Sueur,

bsky.app/profile/vvv.... Got this on video here <3

National media should really be covering the fact thay every major school, museum, and arts institution in the Twin Cities, and hundreds of local businesses are closed tomorrow to protest federal occupation. Nothing like this at this scale has happened anywhere in America anytime in living memory.

Gosh, if only there were a constitutional mechanism for removing a president who is mentally ill and unfit to hold office.

"We are not walking to bring peace to anyone. We are merely messengers to remind you that you already possess that peace and happiness, but you have forgotten it..." Venerable Bhikkhu Pannakara, on the Walk for Peace

I have family under siege from the feds in Minneapolis, but they and their neighbors are feeding, warning and protecting others who are fearful to leave their homes. The community is one big family that refuses to be divided by ICE or hate.

one of the best things about this whole nightmare has been watching a whole bunch of folks who have clearly never been seriously political in their lives standing up and going, no, absolutely the fuck not, we’re not letting this happen

At last night’s candlelight vigil for Renee Nicole Good, Bishop Rob Hirschfeld of the Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire announced he had asked the clergy of the diocese to get their affairs in order and to make sure they have their wills written ...,

Danez Smith, a poet laureate of America's heart - "Neighbor, now that you are part of that eternal elsewhere, what do you see ahead of us? How long is it until goodness wins?" www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/feat...

AOC: “I understand that VP Vance believes shooting a young mother of three in the face three times is an acceptable America that he wants to live in, & I do not — That is a fundamental difference between VP Vance & I — I do not believe the American people should be assassinated in the street”

My wife, a Minneapolis native, reminding me it's dead of night in Minnesota in January, below freezing, and there's thousands of people outside

All the Water in the World by Eiren Caffall - an astonishing book. bookshop.org/p/books/all-...

Just realized Clarion West has online classes, live and on-demand. www.clarionwest.org/programs/onl...

You should always read Will Bunch, but especially today.

We are so far past impeachable offenses. He was impeached twice in his first term and there were already more than two impeachable offenses. He’s pushed the window way over, and has suffered no consequences. He won’t stop.

Now feeling close to humans who lived before us and live now in countries "governed" by murderous, corrupt, lawless, and unrestrained leaders. And our own have not even really cranked up the death machine yet

"I have found, in short, from reading my own writing, that my subject in fiction is the action of grace in territory largely held by the devil." Flannery O'Connor

Very pleased that New York City will have an inaugural poet and such a fine one in the great Cornelius Eady. Poet Elizabeth Alexander of the Mamdani arts and culture transition committee doing good work: “Poets and artists…can say things that politicians can’t say.” www.nytimes.com/2025/12/30/n...

It’s still the Kennedy Center It’s still the Gulf of Mexico It’s still the Department of Defense It’s still Twitter If you have any other Q’s feel free to ask us

"If you don't assume freedom, then you're not free. You have to make the assumotion of freedom. Otherwise if you're worrying it's ok to say something then you're not free, you're inhibited." Salman Rushdie

Mark Twain would have immediately seen JD Vance for who he is and written something about it.

What a world to go to bed thinking about one mass shooting and wake up to news of another, a targeted hate crime, at a Hanukkah celebration in Sydney. And also in the video where an actual hero, Ahmed al Ahmed chooses not to kill one of the terrorists.

Read this poem just in time for today's Feast of the Immaculate Conception: Adia Muhammad's "The Virgin Mary on MTV's Teen Mom: Nazareth - Pushcart 2025 and The Pinch

Required reading - This Here Flesh, Spirituality, Liberation, & the Stories That Make us, by Cole Arthur Riley - bookshop.org/p/books/this...

An official government account using the word “remigration” is not normal. It’s an imported term from European far-right movements that refers to mass expulsion. Democracies do not use population-purification language. #holdfast #SteadyState

There is literally no reason for the military to be in D.C.

Thank you to Lit Mag Lounge, curated by Janelle Drumwright, for the invitation to write about "Everything is Burning," published this fall in Thimble substack.com/home/post/p-...

Patricia Smith’s The Intentions of Thunder: New and Selected Poems has won the National Book Award for Poetry! Read more here: buff.ly/HKCSQQQ

"Over and over, the terrible weakness of the powerful" James Richardson, from Vectors 6.2: Just Saying

I don't know what will happen in NYC tonight, but I do know that regardless of outcome, any number of public figures, celebrities, politicians and institutions that oppose Mamdani have done so with a level of rhetorical ugliness, racism, and dishonesty that should neither be forgotten nor forgiven.

A 66-year-old competitive runner. Six broken ribs. He won’t be able to run his marathon anymore and all because ICE didn’t like how fast he moved his car. This isn’t about “immigration enforcement” anymore. It’s about unchecked power and the normalization of state violence.👇

“It is the vulgarity of this country to believe that naked wealth, unrelieved by any use or design, is merit.” Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1854

Thrilled that Jackdaw Review Fall 2025 includes two of my poems, among so much terrific writing - pp 38 & 39 online.fliphtml5.com/nnzao/ioyf/#...

OVER 7 MILLION PATRIOTIC AMERICANS! That's what I call one big, beautiful demonstration against this vast confederacy of dipshits. The largest protest in American history and not a crime in sight. Needless to say, all 7 million of you are reasons to be proud to be an American.

"A Litany for Survival" by Audre Lorde www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/147275...

More US Federal agency banned words: race, race and ethnicity, racial, racial diversity, racial identity, racial inequality, racial justice, racially, racism, segregation, sense of belonging, sex, sexual preferences, sexuality

"With dripping drops of water even a water jug is filled. Little by little, a fool is filled with evil." The Dhammapada

Shout out to the American Presidents who didn't... (checks notes)... hate Americans.

I love this so much.

Thank you to Eastern Iowa Review for including "Wisdom" - originally published 2020 - in a forthcoming "best of" prose poem anthology from previous issues. www.portyonderpress.com/lisa-bellamy...

I can’t believe I’m watching interviews of city mayors talking about how they are coordinating with other mayors to discuss how to protect their residents FROM THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES I know we are “used to it” but it is absolutely insane

"TIVE" by Gray Davidson Carroll - rattle.com/tive-by-gray...