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"If we can recognize that change and uncertainty are basic principles, we can greet the future and the transformation we are undergoing with the understanding that we do not know enough to be pessimistic." - Hazel Henderson in The Politics of the Solar Age

— Let This Radicalize You by Mariame Kaba, Kelly Hayes (5%)

Spring by Jenny Rowbory

Winter is all around but in this glade there is no ice or snow; warm sunlight bathes us. My hands are filled with soft white petals that I shower over you like confetti; they brush your cheeks as they fall, melting into your skin, coming to settle gently upon the grief, loss and panic. It makes the heavy feel light for a little while. Here it is safe to sing of the hope of Outdoor Hair. What if the seasons are stuck for good this time and Spring never comes. We were never promised it would. Our bodies are covered in the welts and bruises from the kicks and punches of that unmade promise, the one we wish existed: the guarantee of a certain Spring. We are The Winter People yet our hearts are made of snowdrops.

— We Are The Winter People by Jenny Rowbory (Page 5)

us by Tory Dent

in your arms it was incredibly often enough to be in your arms careful as we had to be at times about the I.V. catheter in my hand, or my wrist or my forearm which we placed, consciously, like a Gamboni vase, the center of attention, placed, frail identity as if our someday-newborn on your chest — to be secluded, washed over in your arms often enough, it was in that stillness, the only stillness amidst the fears which wildly collided and the complexities of the illness, all the work we had yet to do, had just done, the hope, ridiculous amounts of it we had to pump from nothing, really, short-lived consensus possibility & experiment to access from our pinched and tiny minds just the idea of hope make it from scratch, air and water like manufactured snow a colossal fatigue the severe concentration of that, the repetition of that lifted for a moment just above your arms inevitable, pressuring it weighed down but remained above like a cathedral ceiling, strangely sheltering while I held tightly while there I could in your arms only there, the only stillness remember the will, allow the pull, tow against inevitable ebb — you don't need reasons to live one reason, blinking in the fog, organically sweet in muddy dark incredibly often enough it is, it was in your arms

— Black Milk by Tory Dent (Page 106 - 107)

Werewolf Avoidance by Nikki Giovanni

I've never "blogged" before so this is new territory for me I do poet though and that is always somewhere in the netherland I think poetry is employed by truth I think our job is to tell the truth as we see it don't you just hate a namby-pamby poem that goes all over the place saying nothing

Poets should be strong in our emotions and our words that might make us difficult to live with but I do believe easier to love Poet is garlic Not for everyone but for those who take it never get caught by werewolves

— Chasing Utopia by Nikki Giovanni (Page 80)

Bed days by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

What were my mom's pain days like? Were they all of them? She didn't have weed, friends, a therapist, yoga, baths, Vicodin, T-3s, community acupuncture, fragrance-free or turmeric. She had wine, silence and a garden. She had hidden.

Sometimes I lie in bed on a pain day with my sick and disabled friends a finger swipe away, my twin canes, my partner who loves me my good bed, my nettles and my deep breaths, and still the pain in my knees and legs lives and shouts fire, and I wonder

if my disability is me feeling all the pain my mom never had a chance to feel finally safe enough to come home and talk to me.

— Tonguebreaker by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha (Page 41)

A Robin's Poem by Nikki Giovanni

if you plant grain you get fields of flour if you plant seeds you get grass or babies i planted once and a robin red breast flew in my window but a tom cat wouldn't let it stay

— The Collected Poetry of Nikki Giovanni by Nikki Giovanni (Page 119)

Reborn by Jason Irwin

A man in a green mask asks me to count backwards from one hundred. At ninety-eight the table begins to spin, and I am swallowed by the light that hangs above me like giant insect eyes.

I can mark time by the surgeries; the way my grandmother marked my growth with pencil slashes on her kitchen door frame.

Each time I awoke from that abyss – my mouth a desert; my eyes two stones sunk in my skull – some small part of me had died; some small part was reborn.

— A Blister of Stars by Jason Irwin (Page 25)

The Funeral of Martin Luther King, Jr. by Nikki Giovanni

His headstone said FREE AT LAST, FREE AT LAST But death is a slave's freedom We seek the freedom of free men And the construction of a world Where Martin Luther King could have lived and preached non-violence.

— The Collected Poetry of Nikki Giovanni by Nikki Giovanni (Page 51)

Sometimes by Nikki Giovanni

sometimes when i wake up in the morning and see all the faces i just can't breathe

— The Collected Poetry of Nikki Giovanni by Nikki Giovanni (Page 132)