by Greg Evans Anybody who reads the Tohono O’odham poet Ofelia Zepeda’s collection of poems, Ocean Power: Stories from the Desert, might reasonably assume she is being ironic with the title. What power, after all, can an ocean have over a people who live in the Arizona desert, “That land where the ocean has not …
Read moreOfelia Zepeda’s Ocean Power and the Apocalyptic American Summer of 2020
Arizona is fourth in the nation in prison population, only beaten by Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Mississippi. 2010 research found 1 in 13 Arizonans have a current or prior felony conviction, limiting their ability to find jobs, support family, and become productive, tax-paying citizens. Spending for the Department of Corrections, which oversees the state’s prison system, …
Carlos Fuentes said there is not a border with Mexico but only a scar, a suppurating scar. Perhaps he did not wish to remind us that more blood is flowing, soaking into sand or staining the rocks. From the air the Border Patrol spots the bodies— unwelcome migrants invading the land that was once theirs. …
Perfectly Wise People by David Ray Now and then you meet these wise people who, when asked what they do, say “Nothing – nothing at all!” “But surely you do something?” “No, nothing – nothing at all.” Oh, wise people who cannot even tell us how to do nothing, for that would be something, really …
ABOMINATIONS by David Ray The vote was a hundred to one, a clear majority. At the stroke of midnight, no more death, at least in the style we have come to know and love. For the next thousand years, walled in like a garden, we will contrive another style altogether, think up other names …