You may already know that 15 US governors recently rejected federal funds available for families who qualify for free school lunches that would provide $120 per child per month through the summer. If you forgot, I get it—your cruelty/stupidity quotient may have reached capacity, and your brain simply couldn’t accommodate one more item. We’re joined in conversation with Mark Nowak, an innovative and influential political poet, author of Social Poetics and Coal Mountain Elementary.  His latest book, Again, takes its title from the last word in MAGA, and works its way through the four seasons, naming this political moment and urgently asking us to consider what the known demands of us now.

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Featured Poem:

“Hope” is the thing with feathers, Emily Dickinson

Today my Hope is vertical, Jane Hirshfield

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Free Write:

I’ve been looking for hope in all the wrong places. Today, I plan to change my quest and here’s where I will search for hope….