Meet Cowboy
With four cats and two dogs already, the very last thing we need is a puppy. But the thing Felix needs most is a service dog, especially as he faces transitions to high school and college in the next few years, so when we were approved to get an Autism …
poetry wednesday : alternate heaven for black boys
Danez Smith will be a featured speaker at the 2019 Life is a Verb Camp.
poetry wednesday: poets know maps
Christmas, 1970 BY SANDRA M. CASTILLO We assemble the silver tree, our translated lives, its luminous branches, numbered to fit into its body. place its metallic roots to decorate our first Christmas. Mother finds herself opening, closing the Red Cross box she will carry into 1976 like an unwanted door prize, …
The power of language
This week the President of the United States said, “We have people coming into the country, or trying to come in–and we’re stopping a lot of them–but we’re taking people out of the country. You wouldn’t believe how bad these people are. These aren’t people. These are animals,” during a …
oh, daddy.
One Year When I got to his marker, I sat on it, like sitting on the edge of someone’s bed and I rubbed the smooth, speckled granite. I took some tears from my jaw and neck and started to wash a corner of his stone. Then a black and amber …
poets know kindness
And so we reach the end of National Poetry Month with a favorite poem from a favorite poet I was honored to host at Life is a Verb Camp in 2014. A compilation of all the poets and poems featured will soon be available, a celebration of 30 poets of …
poets can still taste the cake
Natalie Diaz was born in the Fort Mojave Indian Village in Needles, California. She is Mojave and an enrolled member of the Gila River Indian community. She earned a BA from Old Dominion University, where she received a full athletic scholarship. Diaz played professional basketball in Europe and Asia before …
poets remember the absence of their grandfathers
Born in 1950, Ray Young Bear was raised on the Meskwaki (Red Earth People) Settlement in central Iowa. He graduated high school in 1969, the year he began publishing poetry, and attended Pomona College from 1969 to 1971. He has also attended the University of Iowa, Grinnell College, Northern Iowa …
poets break the solar system
Poet, screenwriter, educator, and performer Fatimah Asghar is a Pakistani, Kashmiri, Muslim American writer. Fatimah Asghar is the author of the poetry collection If They Should Come for Us (One World/Random House, forthcoming 2018) and the chapbook After (Yes Yes Books, 2015). She is also the writer and co-creator of the Emmy-nominated Brown Girls, a …
poets know the act of being human is not easy knowledge
A leading figure in the Native American literary renaissance that emerged in the 1960s, Simon J. Ortiz has published many books of poetry, short fiction, and non-fiction. In general, his writing is concerned with modern man’s alienation from others, from himself, and from his environment—urging humanity to reconnect the wisdom …
