Disclaimer: I rarely write about politics. This is one of those occasions.

I recently did some volunteer work — a two-and-a-half-hour shift where a mix of volunteers and staff sorted food, diapers, feminine products, and other basic necessities, preparing them for drop-off or pick-up. My job was to pack 16 to 18 diapers (depending on the size) into plastic shopping bags.

Last night was the 31st anniversary of my first underage consumption, there on a gravel road south of Sioux Falls, South Dakota, where I grew up. The cops came from two directions, pinned us down between two corn fields. Someone ratted. My dad had to come pick me up. He had been sleeping. He was displeased.  Thirty-one years later I tried an open mic for the first time last night, reading “

I have just a few edits and comments for your consideration.

Some poetry lately, placed in order of most to least favored (by me). EscapeGasoline, propel meAway from here at a high rate of speed We’ve dredged you to burn youFor your torture to take us anywhere but here Take me, thenTo where rubber trees feed on the infinite roads of AmericaWhere the billboards beat by 

Photographs tell a story of two mothers determined to help their babies gain enough weight to leave the hospital — only to face little to no food again.

My dad is giving me his motorcycle. Or rather, one of his motorcycles, with another going to my brother. At 79, he was riding it and tore a rotator cuff when it tipped over at a stoplight and he didn’t have the strength to hold it up. Instead, he tried to have the strength and his body betrayed him. About two years earlier, he’d torn his other rotator cuff when my brother’s dog fell off the pontoon boat and, loving the dog more than any of his five children, he dropped to the pontoon deck quicker than a 77 year old should move and yanked the dog back onto the boat, less one rotator cuff. 

In the front yard of my home is a tree I call the tulip tree. It’s a yellow bird magnolia, and for a brief moment in the spring, each blossom turns into what looks like a yellow tulip. It might last a few days, maybe a week or more depending on the weather, but when it happens, the whole tree explodes like Amsterdam's best, a tulip festival all its own, hundreds of bulbs showing out like silky petaled sunshine.

A few months ago I signed up for a daily “newsletter.” This guy, this poet George Bilgere emails a poem he loves and then says a few words about why he picked it. And so every day for months now I’ve started each day with a poem, and besides dogs, I think it’s the best thing to happen to me in the last year. 

ProPublica has obtained a vast cache of IRS information showing how billionaires like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Warren Buffett pay little in income tax compared to their massive wealth — sometimes, ev...

I am not a prayerful man, though I have offered up prayers in the past with some inconsistency. I am not a believer. But lord, I need a girlfriend, and haven’t I done the time? Help me with this, oh lord, to find love and the support of someone who is totally into me and who I am also totally into, Amen.

Let me introduce you to my friend IbuprofenHe makes the pain say now C’mon let’s get go-ingRound pill, oval, oblong, liquid gelGet yourself a brown candy-coated pill to be feelin well (chorus)16 pills every 24 hoursWatch out for them kidneys man they gettin devouredAin’t no time to be stoppinDon’t forget when you shoppin…

It is in the early days of springWhen a snowfall isn’t yet out of the questionWhen the boulevards and gutters reveal winter’s trash collection An unexpected 70 degrees and the quiet sun in a cloudless sky This is the first day that a reasonable person would wear shorts This is the exact day—not the one before it or the many after it…

We have the power and are claiming it together. No Thrones. No Crowns. No Kings. The Minnesota No Kings coalition of Indivisible Twin Cities, MN AFL-CIO, MN 50501 and Women's March Minnesota, is prou...

I’d originally written the following poem as a paragraph, with all its commas and periods and other detritus. It was about my time camping in Northern Minnesota a year or two ago in the fall alongside a quiet lake with just three camping spots (no water, no electricity) down a long and twisting gravel road an hour’s drive into the woods. 

Knowing that the monkeys might someday write ShakespeareWe wisely took the typewriters away from themRestricted their potassium in precautionAnd set them free from their cages Gleefully slipping upon their way They howledThe ribbons of ink trailing behind them Now ours alone In which to celebrate and despair And so stained, our fingerprints remain our own So long as we might resist 

Good morning. Today is Saturday, February 21. I’ve decided I’m not going to post about politics here, at least not often. It’s not what a lot of you signed up for. That said, I’m still going to write on social and political issues over on my Substack if you want to check it out/subscribe.  My thinking is that in a world of things, I’ve generally found that…

Operation Metro Surge kept many people of Latino and East African descent home, afraid to go to work or out to shops and restaurants. This caused a drastic drop in revenue for small businesses, which ...

In honor of that greatest of bowl games, a poem written by a dog Dog Poetry I want to be pet and snack snacksI want to chew and to napI want to howl and barkAnd take a walk at the parkand oh, what a larkI love you If you want I will sit and I’ll shake…

Rebuild Minnesota immigrant communities and businesses