The mix this week: two poems with hella amazing endings, one with a perfect title, a cool website devoted to black history (including in the West), and for fun some “The Future that Liberals Want” meme and french bulldogs in sweatshirts on a couch.

“Ghazal, the Dark Times” by Marilyn Hacker begins:

Tell us that line again, the thing about the dark times…
“When the dark times come, we will sing about the dark times.”

and includes this stanza, so delicious to read aloud and an excellent use of “bling”:

Naysayers in sequins or tweeds, libertine or ascetic
Find a sensual frisson in what they’d call bling about the dark times.

and after much more like that ends with this gut punch reminder:

You come home from your meeting, your clinic, make coffee and look in the mirror
And ask yourself once more what you did to bring about the dark times.

Read the whole thing.

“New Year” by Joanna Klink also starts in darkness:

We woke to the darkness before our eyes,
unable to take the measure of the loss.
Who are they. What are we. What have we
abandoned to arrive with such violence at this hour.

and reminds us

My life is here, in this small room, and like you
I am waiting to know—but there is no time
to wait for what has happened.

among other things.

Read the whole thing.

Then there’s “What Would Gwendolyn Brooks Do” by Parneshia Jones which is pretty  much the perfect title for our times as poets, no?

It includes this stanza:

We must remember who we are.
We are worth fighting for.
We’ve seen beauty.
We’ve birthed babies who’ve only known a black President.
We’ve tasted empathy and paid it forward.
We’ve Go-Funded from wrong to right.
We’ve marched and made love.
We haven’t forgotten—even if they have—Karma is keeping watch.

Read the whole thing.

I read in the Sunday Seattle Times (support local journalism!) about www.blackpast.org, a site devoted to black history that has a lot of mostly forgotten people and events, and is a particular eye opener for me when it comes to black history in the Northwest. Here’s the ST article.

Here’s a link to some very funny responses to an alt-right tweet trying to damn diversity that became a new meme: “the future that liberals want.” (Hell yeah!) I also like the pictured drag queen’s response to the folderol at the end of the page.

Last, since putting art of pretty much any kind into the world is one way to resist, here’s a drawing I did of French Bulldogs in sweatshirts on a Design Within Reach couch, just for fun.