When you put a convicted felon in charge of your criminal justice system, you know what’s going to happen: he will pardon people who commit crimes on his behalf, or who commit crimes and give him a lot of money, and he will file charges against any lawyer, district attorney, or judge who tries to… Read more

Things are bad. For a lot of people, things are always bad. So many things we used to depend on are broken. We all get to an age where we look at the world and think, it was broken when I got here. Change on the scale that is needed to get things where they… Read more

Lately it occurs to me.Bobby died the other day. It happens every day, somebody cashing in the deposit on a used container that they don’t need anymore. In the moment I hear that someone has gone, I flash through my memories of them: the joy and the grief, the poison and the poetry, all the… Read more

by Renee Nicole Macklin Good (1988-2026) i want back my rocking chairs,solipsist sunsets,& coastal jungle sounds that are tercets from cicadas and pentameter from the hairy legs of cockroaches.i’ve donated bibles to thrift stores(mashed them in plastic trash bags with an acidic himalayan salt lamp—the post-baptism bibles, the ones plucked from street corners from the… Read more

In memory of Bob Weir (1947-2026) The day I went to heaven was both the happiest and saddest day of my life. I only call it heaven because I don’t know any other word for it. Paradise? Eternity? It was beyond words. I died, I guess. The life I had known up to that point… Read more

Round about the circle all the roly-polyRingers tie the ribbons to their fingersWrap the blindfolds round their eyesAnd they wonder as they blunderWhy their answers have no dancersAnd their questions make no sense andTheir conclusions are all liesIn the corn or where the catsAre our best hope for diplomatsAnd the bacon and the beefMake up… Read more