High school students are hit by a high-pressure water jet from a fire hose during a peaceful walk in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963. As photographed by Charles Moore, images like this one, printed in Life, galvanized global support for the demonstrators.

“The Birmingham campaign, also known as the Birmingham movement or Birmingham confrontation, was a movement organized in early 1963 by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) to bring attention to the integration efforts of African Americans in Birmingham, Alabama. Led by Martin Luther King Jr., James Bevel, Fred Shuttlesworth and others, the campaign of nonviolentdirect action culminated in widely publicized confrontations between young black students and white civic authorities, and eventually led the municipal government to change the city’s discrimination laws. In the early 1960s, Birmingham was one of the most racially divided cities in the United States, both as enforced…

How to Fly
by Lisa Alletson

Love the cliff face first.

Measure and weigh
the hands that shackle your ankles
holding you back.

Test the troposphere
with a snowdrop
sprung from your glow.

Leave out a bowl
of black holes
to consume gravity.

Inhale the sweetness
of the wet blade of grass
between you and freedom.

Build a pair of wings
out of tendons and memories
with your naked fingers.

The wings will stick
to your body at first —
low and frightened.

Towel them down
with your childhood blanket
to soak up burdens.

Don’t forget
to take your children —
past and future.

(They will know if you leave without them.)

Don’t forget your strength.
Never forget your strength.

Let go.

IMAGE:Les Oiseaux (The Birds), silkscreen by Henri Matisse (1947).

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Lisa Alletson writes poetry using stark imagery inspired by the political, geographic, and cultural…

How to Eat an Avocado
by Michael Minassian

Cover yourself in green—
nestle it in your hand,
squeeze until it yields
to gentle pressure;
slice in half,
then scoop out the pit
as if you were
removing a broken heart.

When you taste the flesh,
let it linger on your tongue,
flowering like a grove
of epiphanies—
earth, rain and sun,
hunger and thirst,
like the first touch of lips
in a voluptuous embrace.

IMAGE: Avocado (Persea) (1916) by Amada Almira Newton. Original from U.S. Department of Agriculture Pomological Watercolor Collection. Rare and Special Collections, National Agricultural Library. Digitally enhanced by rawpixel, rawpixel.com.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: Avocados have long been considered symbols of love and fertility. Used by Aztecs as an aphrodisiac, the fruit takes its name from the Nahuatlword ahuacatl, which means “testicle.”

AUTHOR’S NOTE ON THE PHOTO: When we lived in Florida we had a huge…

During one of his campaign trips Donald Trump is visiting an elementary school and goes into one of the classes. They are in the middle of a discussion related to words and their meanings.

The teacher asks Mr. Trump if he would like to lead the discussion of the word “Tragedy.” So he asks the class for an example of a tragedy.

One little boy stands up and offers: “If my best friend who lives on a farm, is playing in the field and a runaway tractor comes along and knocks him dead, that would be a tragedy.”

“No,” says Mr. Trump, “that would be an accident.”

A little girl raises her hand: “If a school bus carrying 50 children drove over a cliff, killing everyone inside, that would be a tragedy.”

“I’m afraid not,” explains the exalted businessman. “That’s what we would call a great loss.”

The room goes…

How to Get Lost, Anywhere, Anytime, for No Reason
How in the world did a person get to be where i was?
Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible
by Ed Ruzicka

Start where streets
that run East-West
radiate off a river so old
itdoddersbetween banks
that loop and rope at their leisure
or off a coast line of Ss and Cs.

Maybe this city’s or that’s
cross streets fall across one another
in an abandoned game of pickup sticks.
Follow your feet. Now evening
can tune its orchestra up while
the maestro waits in the wings.

Sunset glazes shop windows.
Doors three inches thick. Faint
hiss of neon. A dog pees. A horn blasts.

Assume that comes from the harbor.
Walk that way though alleys become
fly-blown and loose fists of men idle
in front of stoops and broken fence lines.

Come out in a small park freckled
with palm trees…

How to Be Precious Like Nothing
Like falling in love, you’ll just know.
“How to Become a Werewolf” by Alarie Tennille
by Sheikha A.

Armed with an axe, they look like men
of authority; yellow coats branding

them horticulturists. Their swing
a proficient balance between casual

and careless; the blade blunt
and untamed, handle weathered

under mileage. The axe is a feature
of nothing living – no chromosome,

no breathable structure, yet a thing
of considerable damage, imminent

rigidity, unrotating agility –
Rotation. Like earth in pirouette,

the swirl of a heart in limbo,
scribbles of sound waves,

like the grey slab of the axe,
like polished theatre flooring.

The heart of the tree in cause
and effect from a clumsy blow

of the wind that is not its balm,
of its body that must fall. Pivot

on the rail of delirium and delivery,
the way those men can’t bring…

March 11 is Worship of Tools Day.

 Dave Bonta, self-described ‘digital poet’ says he often suffers from imposter syndrome, but not in a bad way — more like some kind of flower-breathing dragon, pot-bellied and igneous. He is the author of Mountain: An Elegy; Breakdown: Banjo Poems; Words on the Street: An Inaction Comic; and Odes to Tools. Bonta is also the editor and publisher of Moving Poems, a webzine showcasing poetry videos.

To read Dave Bonta’s poem, “Ode to a Claw Hammer” click:

Here is an excellent suggestion from our reader Laura Chapman, whose original research and writing will always find a home here. We have already missed the first Thursday but perhaps TCM will do reruns:

For adults who are fans of Turner Classic Movies, TCM has introduced programing to examine stereotypes in films. This is in addition to programing on women who have and are making films, and many rarely seen films for Black history month.

The TCM experts for the current effort do not mince words and they use clips from many films (older and newer) that depict, for example, male violence against women as if perfectly acceptable, the slaughter of American Indians and ersatz appropriations of native clothing, black actors cast in yes-suh roles, white actors pretending to be black and so on.

This link shows which movies have been selected, the schedule for critical commentary about them, and…

Making Eggplant Croquettes with the NYT Food Page
by Robbi Nester

To make this dish, you have to plan ahead.
One day, two eggplants occupied the shelf
in my refrigerator. I baked them, purple
as a nimbus cloud about to split. They fell in
on themselves, all steam and soft white flesh.
Then I left them overnight to cool, bitter
black juice seeping into the bowl. The next
day, I slipped off their blackened jackets,
chopped the yielding shreds, grated in
four cloves of garlic with a microplane,
mixed in some green-gold olive oil
and salt. I wasn’t finished yet!

After another day of waiting, I spread
a sheet of parchment paper in a pan,
poured in the eggplant mixture, wedged
it in the freezer. Next afternoon, I cut it
into greyish squares smelling of sweet
garlic. Finally, it was time to cook!
I arranged three bowls of beaten egg,