At Last! 2016 Is in the Past

But Before We Reach Out for Something New—a Poem to Bid the Past 12 Months Adieu

You’re game for the year ’17, so you say,
It’s time that the drear of ’16 went away.
Let’s keep the murk past, back where it belongs,
Stop dwelling on all of the things that went wrong.

To you, we now say: have you lost your sense of humor?
That George Clooney break-up is still just a rumor.
And besides, this past year wasn’t really so terrible.
Zócalo rhyming just might make it bearable.

This year, after all, the Cubs took the Series,
Gravitational wave detection proved Einstein’s Theory.
But, yes, the …

The Zócalo Dozen Soothe, Agitate, and Enlighten

12 Favorite Essays Size Up 2016 and Anticipate the Year Ahead

In 2016, writers of Zócalo essays took us inside a dry cleaning business in South L.A., admired the ingenious mosaics created by a Chicago artist to fill the city’s potholes, …