Topics | Compassion | The Sun Magazine #3

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Compassion

Poetry

Backyard Mercy

A fruit fly fell in my fine crystal glass / half full of five-dollar wine. / Annoyed, I almost flung the final sips / behind a rosebush.

By Rachael Petersen April 2021
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

To Make It Through

Some of us have faced devastating losses of jobs or homes or family members, and some of us have more time to take up hobbies and house projects. Some of us pop our trunks open, and some of us fill them.

By Vivé Griffith March 2021
The Dog-Eared Page

At The Arraignment

Which of us has never broken a law? / I died for you — a desperate extravagance, even for me. / If you can’t be merciful, at least be bold.

By Debra Spencer February 2021
Quotations

Sunbeams

Laws, it is said, are for protection of the people. It’s unfortunate that there are no statistics on the number of lives that are clobbered yearly as a result of laws: outmoded laws; laws that found their way onto the books as a result of ignorance, hysteria, or political haymaking; antilife laws; biased laws; laws that pretend that reality is fixed and nature is definable. . . . A survey such as that could keep a dozen dull sociologists out of mischief for months.

Tom Robbins, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

February 2021
Poetry

Stay Safe, Be Well

Found poem from the corporate e-mails in my inbox, March 2020 | In these times    In these unprecedented times / In these uncertain times    In these trying times / You are probably exhausted by all the information. / Rest assured, we are vigilant. / The situation is complex.

By Kathleen Radigan December 2020
Poetry

Self-Portrait With Butterflies

Lonely and a little bored, / I used to donate blood every eight weeks / at the Red Cross across the street / from my studio apartment. / Eyes skyward, arm shot straight, I’d sigh / as a butterfly needle settled on my skin, / its plastic wings drawn to a vein / in my forearm

By Jared Harél December 2020
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

Penance For Nico

I first met Nico at a gathering of country-club types. We two misfits clearly didn’t belong at such a party, where the other guests had doused themselves in so much cologne that we were forced to escape our host’s home to catch our breath on the freshly cut grass.

By Robert McGee November 2020
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

The Practice Of Touch

I imagine my own daughter in Danny’s situation. She is a toddler, so I would be allowed to stay with her if she got COVID. But if she were older, what would I do? What rules would I break to sit beside her?

By Timothy Gallagher November 2020
Readers Write

My Country

Claiming a heritage, becoming a citizen, landing in a foreign jail

By Our Readers September 2020
Poetry

The Hairdresser

sees the old woman — wheelchair bound, pushed by her daughter — glance / out the window, and goes in back / to fetch a shower cap. The woman tugs her daughter’s shirt and says, almost / inaudibly, It’s raining. / And it is raining. Barely.

By Benjamin S. Grossberg July 2020