Browse Topics
Education
Of History And Hope
We have memorized America, / how it was born and who we have been and where. / In ceremonies and silence we say the words, / telling the stories, singing the old songs. / We like the places they take us. Mostly we do.
July 2022
Sticks And Stones
In 1986 I was the Horse Girl of St. Margaret’s, the tallest girl in sixth grade, with dark-brown hair I tossed like a mane.
July 2022
Emotional Morons
Kayla and I were not friends, so when she called me out of the blue, on a blistering July morning, to ask if I wanted to join her and her dad on the lake for the day, it was like NASA calling to invite me to the moon.
June 2022
Falling Behind
Ruth Milkman On The Growing Job Insecurity In America
In terms of security and a sense that you can count on a certain career path in life if you do your part — that’s over for most people. You’re on your own.
May 2022
More Of This, Please
In grad school I had a writing teacher who’d completely cream my essays. / Cross-outs and tracked changes. He took me at my word / when I said I wanted to get better.
March 2022I Pledge Allegiance To The Republic
Every morning the public school chooses a student to lead us in patriotic worship over the intercom. I stand before my classroom flag and count my heartbeats. At recess I draw stars and stars.
March 2022Before
It’s not as though I was going on dates, gorging / on the daily bread of sex, before the governor told us all / to stay home.
June 2021The Quiet Room
She read a brief passage in a small, clear voice that will live on in my memory. Fluent in sounding out words she didn’t know, she gleaned tones from everyday verbs that I’d never dreamed they possessed, and conferred a strange new life on faded old nouns, as one might draw a hidden thread of some brilliant color from an old rug.
April 2021
Racing Toward The Future
[History] rushes on, as it always did, with two forces racing toward the future, one splendidly uniformed, the other ragged but inspired.
November 2019
