Browse Topics
The Natural World
Observations On Ice
We have been repeatedly warned about the dangers posed by calving ice. Yet I still hope to see it: a spectacle of devastation. Reveal yourself to me, I demand. The glacier answers with silence.
May 2023
Some Thoughts On Mercy
When we have mercy, deep and abiding change might happen.
May 2023Don’t Panic
Rebecca Priestley On Finding Hope Amid The Climate Crisis
I’m not talking about burning the system down. . . . I simply think that the things we can do to respond to climate change will also make the world a better place for most people.
May 2023
Curve-Billed Thrasher
The curve-billed thrasher digs the small purple potatoes / from the raised garden beds and ruins them. / He sets them back into the hollows in which they grew, / each speared neatly once through the heart.
May 2023Sunbeams
May 2023I’m still learning how dogged people can be in denial, even when their freedom or their lives are at stake.
Sound Art
Outside the airport he saw a white girl with dreads in a T-shirt with the Rising Phoenix logo — a bird with wings on fire. She’d even written his name with a Sharpie on a piece of paper, along with the word Media, which is what he’d claimed to be.
April 2023Chasing Hawks
After the radiation ruined her lungs, / and they’d drained fluid once a month, / then every other week, then every day, / my grandma said she wanted to go / home.
April 2023Speaking Of Tongues
Justin E.H. Smith On The Mysteries Of Language
This is an extremely creative and spontaneous moment for language. There are whole sociolects that you and I don’t even know about, because we’re too old or we don’t belong to the communities of people who have come up with them. Emoji are fascinating because they’re a return to the ideographic sources of a lot of writing.
April 2023
Ode To The Man Who Gave Me A Dinosaur Notepad On Our Hinge Date
Because he didn’t think girls don’t like dinosaurs. Because he didn’t assume / he was entitled to have sex with me because he bought me a taco. / Because our date was an hour. Because what he gave me was light / and easy to carry.
March 2023The Skull
When he held it out, I ran / my fingers over the shredded / cartilage of the nasal cavity / and the sutures that fused together / the cranium, the tip of my finger / gone for a second when I poked it / inside a shadowy orbit
March 2023
