The Slowdown: Poetry & Reflection Daily

Today’s poem is Refuge by Nehassaiu deGannes. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s formally rich poem positions gardening as a powerful means of holding on to one’s culture, to one’s culinary identity in a new land.”Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

Today’s poem is The Gift to Sing by James Weldon Johnson. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “For those of us who want to hold onto the light as long as we can, we make sure to embrace more than the material comforts — we can make sure to surround ourselves with family, friends and song.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

Today’s poem is Grace by Orlando Ricardo Menes. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “I believe in grace, which arrives from a sacred belief that all of us are deserving of it.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

Today’s poem is The Pacific by Jennifer Jean. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “What I appreciate in today’s poem is the speaker’s indomitable outlook that echoes my grandparents’ optimistic spirit, especially in the face of deprivation and difficulty. Today’s poem lands on what is both a beautiful notion and a pragmatic belief: that even in our states of lack, we still live a miraculous existence, where love and natural beauty abound.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

Today’s poem is What the Body Gives Away by Saba Keramati. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “I like to believe that my senses are open as I take in music, food, travel, new adventures, new friends. I like to think poetry makes me extrasensory. But, then again, my wife would argue I spend too much time in my head, thinking my life away. I enjoy how today’s poem makes it a goal to be keenly aware, intuitive, and innate.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

Today’s poem is Echo by Christina Rossetti. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem calls back to a deceased beloved, to return to this side of existence, to traverse the layers of time — an incantation that wishes to reunite us with the bliss we once knew.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

Today’s poem is Something Sweet by Hannah Lowe. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. We’re taking a break this week, so we’re sharing some of our favorite episodes from the archive. We’ll be back with new episodes on January 6, 2025. This episode was originally released on November 24, 2023. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem, a sonnet, holds the truth that the world is capable of awakening us out of our petrified states. We can be charmed back into our bodies and repaired, so that we feel again, sometimes acutely, the sweetness of our existence more than the hostile and profane.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

Today’s poem is abundance of light by erica lewis. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. We’re taking a break this week, so we’re sharing some of our favorite episodes from the archive. We’ll be back with new episodes on January 6, 2025. This episode was originally released on September 13, 2023. In this episode, Major writes… “I hear in today’s poem a haunting, reckoning, and nostalgia – dominant themes among poets on the road. On stages and podiums, we traded poems about heartbreak, childhood memories, and personal loss. What emerges is a triumphant questioning spirit that overcomes grief and uncertainty.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

Today’s poem is Counting, This New Year’s Morning, What Powers Yet Remain To Me by Jane Hirshfield. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. We’re taking a break this week, so we’re sharing some of our favorite episodes from the archive. We’ll be back with new episodes on January 6, 2025. This episode was originally released on January 1, 2024.In this episode, Major writes… “The clocks have struck another year. Soon, I will box up and archive 2023 in the mental basement of my mind, although I'm sure certain events of the past 365 days will reverberate in both predictable and not-so-predictable ways into the future. Today’s poem makes a powerful assertion that maybe what we bring to the problems of the world, to our sense of survival, is our attention—and our joy.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

Today’s poem is End of December by Ashjan Hendi, translated by Moneera Al-Ghadeer. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. We’re taking a break this week, so we’re sharing some of our favorite episodes from the archive. We’ll be back with new episodes on January 6, 2025. This episode was originally released on August 15, 2024. In this episode, Major writes… “Tests to long-term commitments are bound to happen. Expending too much affection can lead to exhaustion and the bruise of eventual disappointment. As today’s poem suggests, one of the secrets to a successful marriage is moderation and restraint.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

Today’s poem is Dear Future Me (#12) by Lena Moses-Schmitt.The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. We’re taking a break this week, so we’re sharing some of our favorite episodes from the archive. We’ll be back with new episodes on January 6, 2025. This episode was originally released on March 30, 2023. In this episode, Major writes… “Writing poetry is chiefly a search for language that makes a tidy explanation of both the present and the past, with the hope our mind grabs on so that the poem emerges also as a visceral experience of thinking, that is, thinking as an unfolding and awakening, both for the author and the reader or in this instance, a listener. But then occasionally, writing poetry is also an offering to the future: poem as a container of time, whose language signifies the era in which it was written.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

Today’s poem is Ode to Bones by Lynne Thompson. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. We’re taking a break this week, so we’re sharing some of our favorite episodes from the archive. We’ll be back with new episodes on January 6, 2025. This episode was originally released on December 22, 2023. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem riffs off a childhood name, to caravan us to all the possibilities of association which brings the speaker back to the uniqueness and individual nature of their being.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

Today’s poem is After the Farm was Sold to FedEx by Carlie Hoffman. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. We’re taking a break this week, so we’re sharing some of our favorite episodes from the archive. We’ll be back with new episodes on January 6, 2025. This episode was originally released on June 27, 2023. In this episode, Major writes… “Often, nostalgia can look like that woodblock key handed to us at the interstate rest stop. It opens a door, but the past is really a little room and kind of smelly, yet, in our mind, exists as a golden age. One we urgently grasp for.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

Today’s poem is Childhood by David Baker. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. We’re taking a break this week, so we’re sharing some of our favorite episodes from the archive. We’ll be back with new episodes on January 6, 2025. This episode was originally released on May 21, 2024. In this episode, Major writes… “I enjoy today’s poem immensely for how it makes its opening comparison, then leads us to the sweet conclusion, one about an experience we all share. Yet, it individualizes through the power of metaphor.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

Today’s poem is Two Shadows by Maurice Manning. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. We’re taking a break this week, so we’re sharing some of our favorite episodes from the archive. We’ll be back with new episodes on January 6, 2025. This episode was originally released on December 18, 2023. In this episode, Major writes… “I want someone in my daughter’s life who will sing to her when she is most full of doubts and uncertainties, when storms inevitably arrive. Today’s poem gorgeously anticipates the day ahead when our children will pursue their own loves, and what magic we might model for them.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

This episode was originally released on July 17, 2024. Today’s poem is Voice Clear As by Kemi Alabi.The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Long ago, I knew I needed a new conception of heaven. The one with pearly white gates and winged angels from my youth in church just wasn’t working for me. I mean, I get clouds and blue skies as symbols of ascension from earthly plains. And it wasn’t just in church — heaven was everywhere, in museums and in movies, too. But those early images, lodged into my subconscious, weren’t inclusive or realistic, except for the 1936 Hollywood classic Green Pastures.”Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

Today’s poem is Gorgon Loves Googie's by Rebecca Morgan Frank. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Yet, how do we refresh and enfold long-standing tales, figures, and voices such that they hold special meaning for us tomorrow? Today’s poem intertwines a figure of the past and a vision of the future, expressing the difficulty of attaining desire, and the reality of unfulfilled longing.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

Today’s poem is The Room is a Rectangle by Marianne Chan. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem invites discussion of the physical and emotional barriers that exist between family members when dealing with mental health issues, spotlighting feelings of confinement and helplessness.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

Today’s poem is Film Theory by Xan Forest Phillips. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem reminds me that artists exist in a culture of rejection. And over time, the little illusory nicks to your ego, and the weight of commitment to your art, either extinguishes your fire or has you recommit even more, driven by that sheer love of making.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

Today’s poem is The Future of Terror / 1 by Matthea Harvey. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s haunting poem, an embedded abecedarian, gets at the bizarre alter-reality of violence, how it distorts and impacts everything.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

Today’s poem is Immersive by Joseph Millar. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Poetry reorients me, does the work of humanizing, of not letting me devolve to despair. Its insistence on staying present, on paying attention, on speaking to the beauty in nature and the beauty in us, renews my faith.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

Today’s poem is Fade Away by Amorak Huey. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “I cannot fully explain my renewed love for vinyl. All I know is that for eight weekends straight, I have found myself randomly walking into a record store. Although you might know me to be nostalgic, I do not uphold the golden days of analog and denigrate all things digital. Today’s poem insists our lives, like so many analog recordings, are raw, unadorned, layered, full of disruptions and distortions.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

Today’s poem is When you have to kill everybody in the room by Niki Herd. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem presents a psychological portrait of a gun owner and the looming senses of danger and potential to harm that accompanies him.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

Today’s poem is The Trees by Jericho Brown. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “I love the calls and trills of warblers and rose-breasted grosbeaks, the rushing sound of a brook over stone, the irrational belief, some might say, of connecting with something larger. I start off sometimes in a spiritual crisis, but walk out spiritually cleansed. For this reason, the natural world over the years has become my lifesaving talisman.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

Today’s poem is Time || Immemorial by Daniel Simon. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Poems about public events offer reflection. They counter political and media rhetoric that aims to simplify. Writing poems gives citizens in a democracy a place at the table of ideas and grants us a way to engage that promotes justice and civic dialogue.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

Today’s poem is A Dominican Poem by Danielle Legros Georges. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem problematizes easy notions of citizenship and arbitrary boundaries. It powerfully implores us to reflect on our advantages, to find a way to humility — and to connect with those whose freedom is not a given.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

Today’s poem is The Presence in Absence by Linda Gregg. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “As poet Elizabeth Alexander asks in one of my favorite poems, “Ars Poetica #100”: “and are we not of interest to each other?” While not its only function, for poetry also thrives beyond the affairs of societies, poetry deepens our appreciation for people. Their perspectives and life events take central stage. It’s as if they are with us, though not with us.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

Today’s poem is That's My Heart Right There by Willie Perdomo. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “I did not appreciate the depth of emotions behind the songs my grandfather sang, until one morning when I arrived early to high school for track practice to see my crush holding hands with my best friend. Whew! I could have sung a hundred blues songs, and would have felt none the better. But I came to understand something about love; we are creatures with wild hearts.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

Today’s poem is On the Death of a Young Lady Five Years of Age, a reinscription by Aracelis Girmay. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Last year, a group of poets celebrated the 250th anniversary book publication of Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (1773) by Phillis Wheatley Peters. In honor of this important milestone editors Danielle Legros Georges and Artress Bethany White solicited Black female poets to write in the manner of Phillis Wheatley, or creatively reinscribe what is found in the text as some of her abiding images and important themes. The anthology, Wheatley at 250, from which today’s poem is taken, honors and celebrates the immense legacy of Phillis Wheatley Peters, whose work matters to all of us who cherish the possibilities of poems and poets to represent the highest ideals of literacy, and the miracle of language to free us.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

Today’s poem is The Canonization by John Donne. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s classic poem knows that loving hearts create possibilities for us to exist as full and whole human beings. We need as many examples as possible of sweet passion and friendship. It might be the key to our survival.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

Today’s poem is On Living by Nazim Hikmet, translated by Randy Blasing and Mutlu Konuk. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “My walk that morning brought forth the world in technicolor, piercing green trees, a blue sky screeching loud as a free jazz concert, a jogger’s passing smile, soft, otherworldly. The earth hummed and throbbed. At a stoplight, I was suddenly filled with an inexplicable joy. My day of explosive happiness was counterintuitive. My inner world was actually gray; a family member has been battling cancer, another a victim of hurricanes, and then there was myself, ever negotiating the psychic demands of being present in a world where kindness feels in short supply.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

Today’s poem is 52 Blue by Sappho Stanley. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today's poem probes into the ocean within the self — the mysteries of love.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

Today’s poem is Farmers’ Market by Molly Fisk. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “When I was younger, as an introverted kid, I did not value large family gatherings during holidays, especially not Thanksgiving. Now, I appreciate what I once shunned. Gather me among kinfolks. Let’s talk loudly with drinks in our hands. Let’s enjoy the bounty of family and rituals that fill us with connection and the purpose of loving each other. And when we sit down to dinner, let our blessings surround us. Let us relish joyful interactions.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

Today’s poem is Listening to Monk's Misterioso I Remember Braiding My Sisters' Hair by Christopher Gilbert. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “The phrase “take me away” sounds passive. But music requires work, requires paying attention to changes, knowing a passage is an improvisational homage to some legendary artist. I love keeping up with the fast thinking behind the notes like little sunbursts. The nuances, say, of a Thelonious Monk off-chord is an intentional discordant act which announces presence.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

Today’s poem is A Garden and a Street by Teresa Cader. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Poetry holds that place of both awakening and frustration, of perseverance against unimaginable violence and the flight away from the pains of our fragile world. Someday the bombs will stop falling. Someday the rhetoric of hatred will not have an audience. Isn’t this something that we all should work toward? Until then, so says the speaker in today’s poem, we must find a way to restore ourselves to a place of harmonious connection with and belief in all life.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

Today’s poem is Big Purple Peonies by Margaret Ross. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s deeply satisfying poem arrives from an exacting eye. The poet’s kinetic imagination and mental roaming feel gorgeously reportorial and cinematic, mapping self-reflection through their portrayal of vibrant landscapes.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

Today’s poem is Telescope by Louise Glück. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Myka Kielbon writes… “I live on a hill on the edge of a valley. I look out my window and watch cars creep by on the interstate that could take me a thousand miles to my birthplace if I so choose. This slice of Los Angeles – the one I look out over everyday – is odd to reconcile with the map that I see on my phone. So now, as I live in it, I try to find my own authentic knowledge of the earth I see and the earth I feel, some melding of technologies and body.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

Today’s poem is Poem (“Instant coffee with…”) by Frank O'Hara. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Myka Kielbon writes… “Loren was the person I knew in New York who was the same kind of lost as me. There is a magic to how we find each other when we need each other. It seems like our souls sort of… orbit until they reach out. They land. They find ground and we find a friend, even if it’s temporary.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

Today’s poem is Waiting for the Annular Eclipse by Rhoni Blankenhorn. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Myka Kielbon writes… “Rock bottom is a funny place. If anyone has been there, then I suppose we all end up in our own rock bottom at some point. The truth about nothing ever ending, nothing ever being final, is that things will be the same again, too. Just not all at the same time, in the same way. You’ll find a new rock bottom. And, a new way out.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

Today’s poem is Aleppo by Hala Alyan. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Myka Kielbon writes… “Recently, I dreamt that my friend and I were moving into a big, old apartment. Once we got the couch in the living room, my grandmother appeared, sitting on it. I haven’t seen her in a decade. She died in 2015. I think my grandmother, a woman who witnessed and bore great suffering, a woman who was courageous and loving, came to me to remind me of the strength we need to carry each other.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

Today’s poem is Brooklyn is for Breakups by Chen Chen. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Myka Kielbon writes… “I have experienced a whole lot of life, and romance only forms threads of that life, woven into all the other moments. The threads are often short. They have loose ends. What I struggle with – what I’ve struggled with for years – is naming the importance of the relationships I’ve had with people that don’t fit neatly into a category.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

Today’s poem is Mother of the English Language by Nicole Arocho Hernández. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Myka Kielbon writes… “Today’s poem has that kind of intimacy you only achieve by deciding to be weird together. When we forgo a tight grip on meaning, sometimes we get a little closer to the truth of feeling.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

Today’s poem is My Father Flying by Jan Beatty. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Myka Kielbon writes… “Grief feels, sometimes, like a burden. A heavy one. But it is also a practice. People we love leave this earth, but they don’t leave us. We can find lightness in small rituals, small memorials to share with the world the version of the person that we have folded up inside of ourselves.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

Today’s poem is Forgiveness Rock Record by Tawanda Mulalu. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Myka Kielbon writes… “Today’s poem excavates the hard route to self-love, but it also shows us the trick: that self-love doesn’t happen all alone.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

Today’s poem is Shadow Play by Jessica Fisher. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Myka Kielbon writes… “Today’s poem speaks to someone who left marks on this earth hundreds of years ago. It asks what elemental — and metaphysical — forces moved through them, like wind playing the chimes. Just like those forces did then, and do today, and will tomorrow.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

Today’s poem is Letter to a Young Poet by Megan Fernandes. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Myka Kielbon writes… “Today’s poem holds its epiphanies close. It lives in that space which grows from wholehearted obsession, specificity, and the knowledge that the act of returning is the kind of love that keeps us going.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

Today’s poem is On Being by Ruben Quesada. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem captures our complex relationship with nature, how we experience the sublime of the seasons, but also, the way it is often mediated through our modern and mechanized era.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

Today’s poem is Mami Told Me to Put Water under the Bed by Peggy Robles-Alvarado. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem professes the healing properties of water and the restorative powers of language to renew our connection to each other.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

Today’s poem is Trans Loneliness by Rickey Laurentiis. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Society’s debates around gender identity boils down to this simple fact: people want others to see them as they see themselves. This is a pure, human need for affirmation from friends, parents, and peers. It builds self-esteem and mental stability.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

Today’s poem is A House Called Tomorrow by Alberto Ríos. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “I loved watching the volunteers at my polling place. They were cheerful. They lovingly bantered, though they certainly could have belonged to different political parties. They gave me a vision of selfless coexistence that felt like this defined us more than our public debates. I thought of legions of people who volunteer to combat all manner of challenges to society, no matter their political affiliation.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp