Let’s use accurate terms when we speak of the extra-judicial killing of people of color by American police whose salaries we pay. In any other country we’d call it state-sponsored terrorism.

Roxanne Gay on Alton Sterling. Reginald Dwayne Betts on Tamir Rice. Jesse Williams’ beautiful speech at the BET awards, full transcript here. Chauncey DeVega: Dear America’s police: Please stop killing black men. Marc Lamont Hill & Mychal Denzel Smith: We Must End State Violence Against Black Bodies.

Eileen Myles on gays, guns and violence.

Michael Eric Dyson opens ALA with the case for diversity.

Judith Butler: gender as performance.

Small is beautiful: the importance of the chapbook, at The The Poetry.

Wompus author Van Garrett’s photography: My Caribbean Glow.

Wompus author Leah Umansky: Transitory poetics, on Entropy Magazine.

So often it feels like midnight. Take a breath. Speak out where you can. Turn to art when you can. Turn to each other.

Breathe in the beauty, not just the pain.

Breathe.

with love,
sammy

thanks to Emory Petrack for the photo of moonlight on the bay