Blog

Two Poems

May 31, 2024 - By Haya Abu Nasser

I met Haya Abu Nasser in January 2024 under the auspices of We Are Not Numbers, a youth-led literary mentorship program founded in Gaza in 2015. We Are Not Numbers, or WANN as it is called by its members, pairs young Palestinians who are writing in English with international mentors. The goal is to help the young writers develop their skills and to amplify their voices around the world. Since October 2023, WANN, its writers, and its mentors have forged literal lifelines, providing an outlet for expression, emotional sustenance, and material support for a people under siege. In this time, Israel has killed WANN mentor and teacher Refaat al-Areer,...

10 Questions for Patrick Donnelly

May 29, 2024 - By Franchesca Viaud

1. CHLORIS HAS HER SAY

“If it’s true, Chloris, that you love me,
and I’ve heard you do love me well—”
was a fresh way for you to begin.
After that you lost the thread a bit,
scorning ambrosia and the prospect
of trading places with kings if my love
were sure. (No kings were offering.)
—from "Anti-Pastorals," Volume 65, Issue 1 (Spring 2024)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
My mom read poetry and gave me the idea that poets do estimable work. I knew which poets were her favorites—Chaucer, Yeats, Pound, and, weirdly, Swinburne. So as a kid I tried to write poetry and would come to her with my efforts; it was one currency of a relationship that...

Tripelicious Trio

May 28, 2024 - By Marsha Bryant

And pints that instantly glow,
On the counter, in pyramids of crowns…
—Émile Verhaeren, trans. Jacob Siefring

Tripelicious is how I describe
These Belgian-style beers I imbibe.
As I sip golden glow,
I will rhyme and bestow
Approbations with Tripel Ale vibes.

1
St. Vrain is a river and beer.
Lightly fruity, the latter will cheer—
fully tickle the tip
Of your tongue as you sip.
It’s refreshingly Belgian all year.

2
O La Fin du Monde ale is a classic.1
This slow sipper Tripel...

What Would Daniel Ellsberg Do?

May 24, 2024 - By Christian Appy and UMass Faculty for Justice in Palestine

I have been a history professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst for twenty years. On May 7, I was one of a handful of faculty members arrested for standing in support of hundreds of students who were engaged in nonviolent protest of university complicity in the ongoing slaughter and suffering of Palestinians in Gaza. They want the school to divest from companies profiting from the carnage.

In the hours before UMass Chancellor Javier Reyes called in more than a hundred state police in riot gear to arrest anyone who did not disperse from the area in and around a small encampment, I wrestled with questions of conscience and practicality. Am I willing to be arrested? Is it the right thing to do? Could it make a difference? Would there be negative consequences for my...

to cast a shadow for each other until we are bones

May 22, 2024 - By k

A review of The Girl Before Her by Line Papin (Kaya Press, 2023)

The road to the laundromat is iced all over and the wind is ruthless, blowing me back to the winter in Massachusetts, to the field of sunflowers, their eight-foot stalks almost depleted of moisture, their beehive heads bent over by snow, yet refusing to touch the ground. Suddenly this image comes to me: i’m running in the snowfield toward somewhere i don’t know, and a flash of light enters the corner of my eye—a silver figure running in my direction. We meet with a hug in the middle of the field (in an open field, everywhere is the middle). We hug without a word, feeling each other through layers and layers...