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Three Generations

Poetry
One day a child was laid in my arms/ My first born, a daughter who looked like me,/ Who showed me unconditional love,/ This was a beautiful new experience/ To have a daughter,/ I was changed to my core ... I was transformed/ I became somebody’s mama.

The Poet, the Police, and the Spirit of the Sixties

Poetry
“There was going to be a big demonstration the next day — people throwing things and stuff. Everybody was angry and I was just as angry as anybody else, but I was a pacifist and besides, if I threw anything, I’d probably hit my foot.” — Julia Vinograd

Oakstop Gallery Is a Showcase for “Black Artists on Art”

Arts and Culture
Oakstop Gallery is displaying 36 artists from three generations in its exhibition, “Black Artists on Art.” It was inspired by Samella Lewis. an African American historian and artist, and the author of two volumes of Black Artists on Art. Trevor Parham and Samella Lewis’s grandson, Unity Lewis, collaborated on the exhibit.

They Left Him to Die Like a Tramp on the Street

Arts and Culture   Features
Skid Row was an oppressive place where thousands were locked in merciless, grinding poverty. Every day, the Catholic Workers served meals to countless destitute people on Skid Row. And every day, they sang. I never got over that — the songs they sang in the midst of terrible hardships.

James Baldwin’s Double

Fiction
After the battle, Zane recovered in an Army hospital, but the guilt never left him. In his recurring dreams, a white-haired, bearded prophet denounces him: “That bullet had your name on it.” His life is changed forever and the image of his friend Xavier was always in his mind.

A New Wonder Drug for a Brave New World

Fiction
The drug company knew about the undesirable side-effects but believed psychiatrists would prescribe the drug anyway, at least to those psychiatric clients who regularly made trouble. Enter Jonathan Baxter, who had gone off his medications several times and had been written up in his medical records as being uncooperative and argumentative.

Lost and Homeless Among the Stars

By Jack Bragen on
Fiction
When I die, or after I die, I want to look back at my life and see that I ate that cookie, I drank that vodka, I made love to that woman. I did not shy away from living because of the petty fear that death might come sooner.

February Poetry of the Streets

Poetry
Filing in, one by one,/ as if into an ark/ of loneliness, out of the rain/ the shelter, its gray/ emptiness anchored/ the bottom by green cots/ arranged in rows, boots/ tucked under, men asleep,/ rocked on the surface/ of watery dreams by a/ great storm never to end.

January Poetry of the Streets

Poetry
Outside our window/ We spot on a rain-stripped/ eucalyptus trunk/ colors we've never seen,/ before: shades of yellow,/ gold, lime green, tan./ A homeless woman/ stripped of an easy life/ also reveals colors/ when we pause long, enough to sense and see.

December Poetry of the Spirit

Poetry
This poet connects/ the one word "gather"/ with the Quaker faith/ as in geese gather/ at lake's edge before/ the V-flight south,/ as in snowflakes gather,/ mounded on roof tops/ before the downward slide,/ as in two homeless men/ gather around a steam vent/ on a city sidewalk.