Since getting out of the hospital, I had been waking up before the sun. For half an hour or so, I would sit outside in the near dark, still and peaceful, and watch the sky change. As I sipped my first cup of coffee, the sun slipped into the day as black became royal. Then a hint of gold and orange would appear right before the sky turned a brilliant light blue and filled with the huge cloud shapes that only a flat landscape and a humid climate can create. The breeze stirred the plants around the pool, and I would hear the muffled sounds of Alice making breakfast, little clinks of spoons and the soft whoosh of the refrigerator opening. This scene is supposed to help me relax and be introspective.

Undone diction
etherized upon a table.
Is or isn’t. In or out. For or against.
Ones, zeroes, x’s, o’s.
Klaxoned opinions clamoring.
A crisis indeed.

The sun blazes overhead. Jenny, like a Butoh dancer in meditative motion, turns the wheel with slow, deliberate grace. The car glides silently along the winding road. Inside, the AI-controlled A/C keeps her cool and comfortable. She no longer resists the heat. Her mind is vacant now.
Suddenly, she grips the wheel and swerves right. Her car merges onto a narrow road canopied by towering oaks.

My father must have heard me walking past his bedroom that late afternoon. He often went to his room before dinner. I assumed he was awake probably watching TV or reading the newspaper, something hardly anyone did anymore, but he did.
He said through the closed door, “I’m still breathing.”
“I’m going out for a bit. I’m walking down to the lake,” I said. I stood listening for a reply. There was none. I stayed a few more minutes not making a sound. Then I heard him mumble something to himself in a quiet, monotone voice. All I could hear was “thank you” said twice, but I didn’t think he was talking to me.

My underarms were moist, the back of my neck clammy. The shower I took in my sister’s dorm was for naught, failing to prevent the pervasive body odor that betrayed me. It was an early March morning in Bloomington, the humidity transforming my shoulder-length hair into a mop of brown frizz, the surface of my face red-lumped and shining like a vinyl rain slicker. I meandered across the quad.

Individuals were often psychologically broken down in Project MK-Ultra, a top-secret CIA program, where agents conducted nonconsensual experiments using drugs like LSD from 1953 until around 1973. However, books like Drugs as Weapons Against Us support that it continued afterward.

Paranoia is deeply embedded in American culture, centered around themes of unhinged scientists and computers, such as the members of an oligarchy that funded Operation MK-Ultra and the Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence. These efforts became key in establishing and supporting AI labs for the future, further strengthening the CIA’s dominance.

Many nights I go to sleep
a teenager and wake
up as an old woman. Mid-
life plays out in dreams

Kabir stood on Agatti Island, staring at the ocean. The water was a perfect blend of blue and green. Turquoise blue. No, turquoise green. Kabir couldn’t decide which one. He glanced at the green stone on his ring. Then, he noticed the swell of the waves crashing against the shore. The water appeared blue.

She held the book in her hands, completely overwhelmed with a mix of jubilation and disbelief. It was like a dream, but the book was very real, the cold, smooth feel of its beautiful hardcover against her palms. A poetry chapbook, nature themed, with the author’s name printed beneath the illustration of a tree by the riverside. Annemarie stared down at the name, reading it repeatedly while wiping away tears of joy. Her name. Her book. A collection of poems by Annemarie Wilder.

On that Christmas morning, he was alone in a small, dim apartment on the southern edge of Mill Avenue, about two miles from the sprawling, rose-hued buildings of Arizona State University. His second wife, Antonia, the Grinchette—mercurial and thirty—had left him in late August 1991, setting off on the last of the “hippie bus” lines, The Green Tortoise. A vintage, meandering bus would eventually bring her back to her parents’ rundown house in the otherwise upscale town where Hemingway was born. Soon after she left, he boxed up and shipped her remaining things.

It was day one in uncharted territory. The rules of the experiment were simple. He was to spend 30 days alone in a cabin in the woods without access to the outside world. If the man were to step outside of the cabin before the end of the 30th day, then the experiment would be deemed a failure, and he would go home with, at best, only a fraction of the money he was promised, depending on how long he could make it.

Questioning
Prayers among hilltop oak and elm seek clarity from God. Do answers lie within my silent soul? Eyes spill tears at headlines from Gaza, Ukraine and Iran. Ideals no longer shine in leaders save for those with little sway. Might once-joyful children’s voices haunt men who order other men to kill? Could retribution’s prospect put their plans in disarray?

Since dawn Jesus has walked the streets
with different faces and portable PA’s
expounding on hell Jesus has nothing good to say
before the flowers come roll down the road on wheels
on floats made of roses and rice and lentils everything organic

When I asked you why we did not happen, you told me that I was too romantic for you, that my chaos did not fit into the orderly compartments in your life.

Even now, when we talk sometimes – as friends – friends who laugh about what could have been, when you listen to me with more patience and interest than ever, I am surprised by how often I filter my stories of joy.

we are called to rise when our souls awaken
collapsing over the edge of an orange sun
moving through its own heat
we awake from the deep
blue hair mussed
we are called to rise beyond the blood of the blind

James was running on the treadmill in time to the quick tempo music blasting in his ears. He was interrupted by an incoming text that lit up his phone sitting in the machine cradle.
Hi, I’m coming to NYC this weekend. Dinner?
Maddy.

Youth often finds itself a casualty of unawareness. In some instances, where there might be gratitude for preadult ignorance, being poor isn’t fun, at any age. I grew up privileged. Some may find it more difficult to embrace having nothing, after having grown up without financial worries. Finding yourself without savings as a senior citizen, however, really blows.

Courageous Frida, icon to millions
who know no more of you than your eyebrows
on the t-shirts your face adorns,
what is your name worth now?

Nitin Gharpure eases his Mercedes along the curb in the alley behind the warehouse. At the end of the alley, a semi is going beep-beep-beep, backing into a loading ramp, aligning a forty-foot container to the dock. And behind that, delicate tendrils of pink are forming over the distant Oakland hills.

In two weeks’ time, I will depart,
and you will see me fading out the doorway,
disappearing from your time and space.

Nothing, no one ever leaves completely,
and so you will not see or hear but sense
the presence, the silence, the smile/frown

It was Tuesday afternoon, on what should have been just another day of service for the Customs Patrol.
Sergeant Baxter of Southern District Airport’s Customs and Vetting Division was nearly ready to wrap up his shift. It had been quiet, this one. He’d normally hit his quota by the first few hours, after which he could busy himself with paperwork or checking out for anyone else he could justify not letting in.

For years the school bus took the same path
past your grandmother’s house—just uphill from yours

each day the fields flickering past,
sometimes filled with corn,
autumn filled with hay bales

Before I understood the weight of memory and the grace of healing, I had hands that reached, held, and learned. Now, when I look at my hands, I don’t recognize them. Not because they’ve changed, but because they’ve held so many lives—mine, my children’s, my grandchildren’s, my ailing Papa’s and Mama’s before they died, my brother’s, dear friend June’s, and adapted Daddy’s Sam’s before they too succumbed to illness. Through it all, my hands never once asked for rest.

Bill Moyers left us on June 26 at the age of 91.[1] His declining health over the past few years, and now his death, have left us longing for more of what he gave so generously in life: insatiable curiosity, clarifying insight, empathy grounded in respect, courage tempered by humility, and optimism anchored in realism.
Because of his life’s work—and because his career spanned a remarkable era in mass communication, from the birth of television to the rise of the internet—we are fortunate to have an extraordinary archive of his spoken and written words. These will continue to inform, inspire, and challenge future generations.