Portside

Marking re-dedication of the San Francisco monument to the Abraham Lincoln Brigade on Saturday 9/12/20, poet Peter Neil Carroll reflects on his friendship with the US veterans who fought fascism in the Spanish Civil War.

On this Labor Day weekend of grievous unemployment, poet Carrie Shipers shines a touch of irony on business-as-usual.

“I’m trying to tell you that the world is beautiful,” writes Brooklyn poet Cynthia Manick; and in her rendering it is.

Nominative determinism, explains poet Ellaraine Lockie about a certain president, is the hypothesis that people gravitate towards areas of work that fit their name.

“After living 60 years…as a Black man from Jamaica,” writes poet Geoffrey Philp, “a DNA test … [revealed} my Jewish ancestry. I am astounded by the endurance of Nazi propaganda and the need for constant vigilance.”

Southern California poet Alexis Rhone Fancher offers a musical rendition on the theme “guns matter/kids do not.”

Months before the public became aware of Covid-19, the poet Quinn Lewis used the word to depict a chosen escape from normal life and the ensuing comforts “inside/the walls.”

Poet Lee Rossi recalls his introduction to right-wing politics, Goldwater’s call for a war against America, much of it still echoing today.

New England poet Janice Miller Potter reminds us of the social costs of having a “president of lies,” a “president of shamelessness.”

After nights of fire and looting, the poet Jed Myers asks in “False Flag” the simple question: who is shifting the blame to whom?