Tropical Storm

Nearly 75% lose power in Richmond and Tri-Cities areas

http://www2.timesdispatch.com/news/2011/aug/27/2/tdmain01-nearly-75-lose-power-in-richmond-and-tri--ar-1268943/

Tree through roof

Lying next to me in bed

Leaves and bark on white sheets

Rain and wind within

My son, once sleeping, 

Lost forever under the branches

On Refusing CVS

http://www.babycenter.com/0_chorionic-villus-sampling-cvs_328.bc?page=1

Floating in darkness

Surrounded by white

Your tiny arms brush your forming face

Forgive us for glimpsing your ancient, watery world

What mysteries lie within?

Coils of DNA blaze with your beginnings

Genes float in a bath of placenta

But what if seeking to know you would destroy you?

Prominent Syrian Cartoonist Attacked, Beaten

http://www.voanews.com/english/news/Syrian-Activists-Anti-Regime-Cartoonist-Attacked-Beaten-128385448.html

They broke the bones in your hands,

Finger by finger,

And set your beard aflame

No matter their brutality

They will not snap your wit

Or burn your criticism to ash

Palpable

Images Show Mass Graves in Sudan, Group Says

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/24/world/africa/24sudan.html?smid=tw-nytimes&seid=auto

Deep in Nuba Mountains

Rows of freshly dug graves

Sear the landscape

Piles of bodies, shrouded in white

Summarily buried, hidden

Yet nothing can bury the scent of burning hair,

Greasy smoke of the pyre,

The palpable presence of absence

Quake

UPDATE: 5.9 earthquake rocks Virginia, East Coast

http://www2.timesdispatch.com/news/2011/aug/23/32/58-earthquake-rocks-virginia-other-parts-east-coas-ar-1256961/

Buildings swayed,

Rumbling like a freight train,

Thumping like deep base,
Threatening as a terrorist attack,

Trembling like your hands,

As the earth grew still.

Wordless

The Troubled Life of Nim Chimpsky

http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2011/aug/18/troubled-life-nim-chimpsky/

Stolen from your mother

Who turned her back at your birth,

Shielding you from grabbing hands of humans,

Who raised you as their own.

Dressed in overalls,

Fed lavish meals,

Nestled as a child,

Taught sign language.

Given images of chimps and people

You placed yourself with humans.

Then abducted again.

Moved to a windowless lab,

Drilled by grad students,

After never ending language classes,

You began to bite your caretakers.

Abandoned to live in a cage,

With chimps for the first time,

Your silent hands, limp and wordless.

A Battle Is Under Way For The Forests Of Borneo

http://www.npr.org/2011/08/21/139788964/a-battle-is-under-way-for-the-forests-of-borneo?ft=1&f=1001&sc=tw&utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

In sacred grove

Slanted sunlight falls on ancient trees

Air sings with acacia and ginger

Voices of ancestors whisper,

Doomed to silence when the last tree falls

Barefoot

Congo River luxury condos cause Kinshasa controversy

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-14595625?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

Barefoot men

Drain the river Congo

To build Manhattan of Kinshasa

Carrying bricks on heads

On street littered with rusty nails

Accident of Birth

Where Children Sleep

http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/04/where-children-sleep/

Golden child

Dimpled and tanned,

Clad like a bumblebee,

Sleeps surrounded by crowns, trophies, and blue ribbons

Romanian boy

With resigned eyes,

Sleeps on an uncovered mattress strewn with leaves,

Overlooking the lights of Rome

Seven year old girl

With wild hair, draped in flannel,

Holds a small hammer,

Works in the granite quarry and

Sleeps in one room with her family,

With tumbling bricks and thatched roof in Katmandu

Skinny boy

Holding a bag of refuge

Lives in a trash heap in Cambodia and

Sleeps on top of abandoned tires on a dirty sheet in Phnom Penh

Young man in three piece suit

With arrogant eyes

Sleeps in his tidy bedroom on Fifth Avenue or Spain or the Hamptons

The Practical Man

Mexican Catches Real Fairy, Preserves It in Formaldehyde

http://gawker.com/5832093/

Stretching for sweetness,

Picking mountains of guavas

Surrounded only by bees and heat

When I brushed against eerie light,

A faerie,

With translucent wings

And darting eyes

Skittering like a violet hummingbird

Her skin, a glowing purple,

Like flesh of a bruised fruit.

She sang, an angel choir,

Weaving hopes and promises into frenzied dream

But I held her tight,

Stuffed her in a bottle,

Drowned her in formaldehyde.

Now pesos rain from villagers’ hands

Let Him Be Haunted

US tobacco firms sue over graphic labels

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2011/08/201181751917290337.html?utm_content=automateplus&utm_campaign=Trial5&utm_source=SocialFlow&utm_term=tweets&utm_medium=MasterAccount

Will he reach for another

Despite the image of

A plume of smoke encircling

A diapered infant?

Let him be haunted by photographs of white vapors rising

From hole in clavicle;

Blackened lung

Dusted with soot;

Rotting, yellowed teeth

In a mouth lined with burns

Will addiction’s throb overpower

The foreboding of elderly man

Wearing an oxygen mask?

No.  He will close his eyes to

Chest of cadaver

Lined with gunmetal sutures;

Tears of sobbing woman 

As she mourns alone.

http://www.fda.gov/TobaccoProducts/Labeling/CigaretteWarningLabels/default.htm

Let Him Be Haunted

US tobacco firms sue over graphic labels

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2011/08/201181751917290337.html?utm_content=automateplus&utm_campaign=Trial5&utm_source=SocialFlow&utm_term=tweets&utm_medium=MasterAccount

Will he reach for another

Despite the image of

A plume of smoke encircling

A diapered infant?

Let him be haunted by photographs of white vapors rising

From hole in clavicle;

Blackened lung

Dusted with soot;

Rotting, yellowed teeth

In a mouth lined with burns

Will addiction’s throb overpower

The foreboding of elderly man

Wearing an oxygen mask?

No.  He will close his eyes to

Chest of cadaver

Lined with gunmetal sutures;

Tears of sobbing woman 

As she mourns alone.

http://www.fda.gov/TobaccoProducts/Labeling/CigaretteWarningLabels/default.htm

Bugged

Air Force Eyes Micromachine Bugs That Can Spy

http://www.npr.org/2011/08/16/139651358/air-force-eyes-artificial-birds-bugs-that-can-spy?ft=1&f=1001&sc=tw&utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

Metallic wings of the dragonfly

Beat each millisecond

Covering an infinitesimal camera

Enemy air thick with electric moths

Recording each breath,

Iridescent cicadas

Calibrating distances

Machinated mass of insects

Poised for reconnaissance

Profit

Shell profits jump 77% on higher oil price

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-14321819

Profits soar

But oil will surge

Cascading into ocean,

Coating coral reef in inky night,

Staining kelp and carp.

Locked Door

He served 10 presidents, but died alone in squalor: What happened to Theodoric C. James?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/he-served-10-presidents-but-died-alone-in-squalor-what-happened-to-theodoric-c-james/2011/08/11/gIQAdz5zDJ_story_2.html

He ----of the cracked windows and

Broken down porch,

Fills rusty buckets with his own filth

He---- the corpse rotting within the

Decrepit row house

He ---- advised ten presidents,

Read top secret cables,

Smiled for the camera,

Linking arms with heads of state.

He ---- died famished and forgotten,

Behind a locked door.

Collateral Damage

Over 160 children reported among drone deaths

http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/2011/08/11/more-than-160-children-killed-in-us-strikes/

Swollen lips

Growing purple

Brown eyes mercifully shut

Or open, vacant

Bruised and bloodied

Or strangely sleeping

Images of dead children

Rendering the truth

Unreadable

Open House

Richmond Apartments For Rent

http://www.forrent.com/apartments/VA/Richmond.php?cmp=KNC-GoogleVARichmond&jadid=5879189407&jk=apartment%20search%20richmond%20VA&js=1&jmt=1_e_&jp=&jkId=8a8ae4cc2777db0a012791157bf8260a&jt=1&jsid=5291&&gclid=CIK6kPCUzKoCFYio4AodriI92A

Strange feet traipse across your burnished floors

Foreign fingers touch your grandmother’s silver service

Outsiders study your gilt framed photographs

In cool appraisal of their worth

Liberty: Closed for Repairs

Statue of Liberty to Close for a Year

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/11/nyregion/statue-of-liberty-will-close-for-a-year-to-further-improve-safety.html?smid=tw-nytimes&seid=auto

Liberty is closed

Citizens may no longer climb her narrow staircase within,

Touch her oxidized green walls,

Or view the harbor from her crown.

Liberty needs reconstruction;

Please forgive the delay.

Mama

My name,

Embroidered with silver thread,

Alights the darkening dreamscape.

Whispering to you from the rushing river,

The song of birds,

The falling blossoms.

My name,

Spoken as if a prayer,

Soothes your terror,

Shepherding you to your dreams.

Shattered

In Pictures: London's Burning, Day 3 http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/inpictures/2011/08/201188233856953939.html?utm_content=automateplus&utm_campaign=Trial5&utm_source=SocialFlow&utm_medium=MasterAccount&utm_term=tweets

River of fire

Rages from blackened police car

Officers clad in sleek gear of battle,

Bearing battered silver shields,

Face angry youths in track suits

Arms filled with boxes of Nikes and cartons of cigarettes

Young faces dirty, defiant,

In London,

City of shattered glass and charred storefronts

Warhol Before "Warhol"

Little Pictures, Big Lives: Snapshots Of American Artists

http://www.npr.org/blogs/pictureshow/2011/08/08/138962140/little-pictures-big-lives-snapshots-of-american-artists

Brazenly

In black and white

Three girls in bikinis

One proudly erect,

Two laughing in the sunshine

Sunglasses reflecting waves

Young Andy Warhol at their feet

Studying grains of sand

Operation Spring Wind

Letters from Drancy

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/jul/18/worlddispatch.jonhenley

Four thousand children

Ripped from their mothers’ arms

Using truncheons and ice water

Women, like animals,

Raged and bared teeth

Placed in cattle cars, all the same

Four thousand motherless children

In Vel de Hiv

With soiled clothes and knotted hair

Scavenging in the dust 

Destined for Auschwitz

End of Detente

Russia uses dirty tricks despite U.S. ‘reset’

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/aug/4/russia-uses-dirty-tricks-despite-us-reset/print/

You are an advocate

For Peace,

A man with deep laugh lines and bright eyes,

An American in Russia

You find 

Your door unlocked,

Cigarette butts on the carpet,

Blood in the bathroom,

A doctored photograph

Of yourself

With prostitutes

Or children

Awkwardly spliced

Yet strangely compelling

You fall to the floor,

Blameless yet burned

Collaboration, disintegration

Wikipedia Is Slowly Dying

http://gawker.com/5827835/

Thousands of lonely men        

In drab efficiencies

Typed frantically on lap tops,

In silence of night,

Purple screens casting a sickly hue

Keyboards clicking

Punctuating the silence

They mapped the world of knowledge

Encyclopedia

Written by the unheard

(Men in their twenties working retail,

Selling books,

Making coffee)

Edited by the masses

Slowly falling out of use

Collaboration, disintegration

Spirit Bear

Kermode Bear

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/08/kermode-bear/barcott-text

Spirit Bear walks in moonlight

Bright white against deep green

mooksgm'ol, Black bear the color of snow

Muslim teenagers convicted of criminal damage after spraying burkas onto scantily-clad models in Lynx poster

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2020548/Muslim-teenagers-convicted-spraying-burkas-scantily-clad-Lynx-models.html#ixzz1Ts9w2Wod

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2020548/Muslim-teenagers-convicted-spraying-burkas-scantily-clad-Lynx-models.html#ixzz1TieFFyBI

I.

Woman

Hair flowing, sultry mouth open,

Wearing feathery white wings,

As if an angel.

Breasts bursting from

Tight silk,

Legs straddling a molten pit

Of pearly steam.

II.

To look twice is a sin yet

How could a man look away?

Waiting for the bus to madrasa

Or walking to mosque,

Her wings

Mocking my devotion.

III.

Black paint covers

Her nakedness.

If only paint could cover

My desire.

Conversion

Can Therapy Help Change Sexual Orientation?

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2011/08/01/138820526/can-therapy-help-change-sexual-orientation-the-jurys-still-out?ps=cprs

Annihilate your light

Sever your love

Extinguish your longing

Deny your truth

Recast yourself in borrowed robes

Strangle your desire

Shun your truth

Conversion

Can Therapy Help Change Sexual Orientation?

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2011/08/01/138820526/can-therapy-help-change-sexual-orientation-the-jurys-still-out?ps=cprs

Annihilate your light

Sever your love

Extinguish your longing

Deny your need

Recast yourself in borrowed robes

Strangle your desire

Shun your truth

Love Rises

Sometimes poetry is unleashed from

A patch filled with weeds

Ripped out on a sunny afternoon

And planted with lilies

Love rises from

The ache of his muscles,

The steam of southern summers,

The toil of his hands

In unyielding earth

Grow

Children of the cannabis trade

http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/peopleandpower/2011/07/201172795838377646.html?utm_content=automateplus&utm_campaign=Trial5&utm_source=SocialFlow&utm_medium=MasterAccount&utm_term=tweets

In gutted warehouses

Of London’ backstreets

Behind blackened windows

Thousands of marijuana plants

Lie under florescent light

Children here enslaved

Stolen from Vietnam

Ferried across the ocean

Locked in strange greenhouses

Forced to live under harsh lights

To breath noxious chemicals

Where only the drug will grow

Baby Bride

Saudi Cleric Rules in Favor of Child Marriage

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903635604576472011907391364.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

When the child can bear the weight of a man

She must

Darken her eyes with kohl

Adorn her with heavy gold chokers

Pierce her nose with a diamond stud

Marry her from the crib

Daughter

Saudi Cleric Rules in Favor of Child Marriage

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903635604576472011907391364.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

When the child can bear the weight of a man

She must

Darken her eyes with kohl

Adorn her with heavy gold chokers

Pierce her nose with a diamond stud

Marry her from the crib

Poetess

The Bell Jar at 40

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/article/242402

Sylviah Plath sealed off the kitchen

Before turning on the gas oven

Virginia Woolf

Walked into the ocean,

Stones heavy in her pockets

Anne Sexton

Lowered garage door  

With the motor running.

No longer women

Struggling with words

Reconstruction

Bit By Bit, Afghanistan Rebuilds Buddhist Statues

http://www.npr.org/2011/07/27/137304363/bit-by-bit-afghanistan-rebuilds-buddhist-

Towering Buddhas

Of stone and sand

In Bamiyan

Exploded to ash and earth

By Taliban.

Slowly, shard by shard,

Immense Buddhas

Are patched together

I wonder if the pieces,

Shattered splinters,

And vacant places Buddha once presided,

Speak a greater truth.

If only muscle and bone,

Limbs and lives,

Could be rebuilt.

A nation exploded

To rubble and ruin

Who will cobble it together?

41%

A Young Mom Resists A Cycle Of Failure

http://www.npr.org/2011/07/26/138546792/a-young-mom-resists-a-cycle-of-failure

"41% of Latina girls leave high school due to pregnancy".

My former students dropped out,

One by one

First Maria, with her little girl laugh

and borrowed maternity dresses

Then Rosa, with her smoky, wide eyes and long brown hair,

Delicate waist already thickening

Mother sick,

Father working two jobs

Brother arrested

Uncle leering

A baby, her only hope

  

Survivor

Norway: A survivor's story

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-14260148

I could feel his boots

Hear his breath

Sense the warmth of the gun

My friends, dead,

Were piled on top of me

As I made my eyes go vacant

No longer seeing blood

Staining the water

The Weight of Shame

One Woman's Struggle To Shed Weight, And Shame

http://www.npr.org/2011/07/25/138606501/one-womans-struggle-to-shed-weight-and-shame?ft=1&f=1001&sc=tw&utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

You recoil

As I fill my plate,

Buy my groceries,

Live and breathe

My skin,

Obscene in its excess,

Bulging under dresses,

Fills the distance between us,

Ensures my space

Shame clings to me,

Heavier than the weight,

Bowing my head,

As I empty my plate