By JACQUELYN POPE
Whatever possessed you
pursues me. Whatever
unnerved you sings me
to sleep, repeats and repeats,
insists. Whatever composed
you constricts me. Where
you were bright I was blind.
By CORINNA MCCLANAHAN SCHROEDER
Follow the serpentine river roads
toward the Little Miami’s lip. Pass through
the sycamore trunks, their whitewashed
limbs. See how they molt their skins.
By ROSANNA OH
As you undo the cuff links in your shirt,
the waiter taps me on the shoulder
and tells me that we are the last customers.
Your fish is cold.
I am waiting in the restaurant, thinking you have gone to piss—
instead, I order dessert
as you press yourself against the sink,
scratching at my name,
scouring me with water and soap.
By CRALAN KELDER
either you feel it or you don’t and I don’t feel a thing, nothing at all,
except I do feel a great warmth standing in the window in the front
of the sun and I think how fucking great it is to be alive I could almost
cry standing there watching the trees pollinating each other
By CRALAN KELDER
when the boys came over
theo with his banjo david
brought his voice we set
some poems to music
berrigan’s Train Ride &
the one about his old house
that he would miss and
By CRALAN KELDER
During this past visit to California, I visited a friend who has been incarcerated since 1985 – for 25 years. In prison, he isn’t allowed to physically handle money, so when we take a break from walking laps around the visiting room and get in line by the vending machines to treat ourselves to hot drinks, he has to stay behind a red line with
OUT OF BOUNDS
By JENNIFER HABEL
I have not been refined in the furnace of affliction
as some have been, but have rather been preserved
with sugar than brine. . . .
—Anne Bradstreet
From three thousand feet the bee smells flowers.
Milkweed thick with them
By MAJOR JACKSON
Only the skin runs ahead like a spruced-up
dream from which I never awake.
What really exists, no one knows.
In exchange for shook foil,
Hopkins killed the agnostic in him.
I want to kill the polygamist in me.
By MAJOR JACKSON
Each day I forget something, but happy
I never forget to wake
to the bright corollas of summer
mornings. I quietly lay in the jury
box of my bed and listen to
the counter-arguments of birds grow
By JACQUELYN POPE
Girl when you get lost
the forest will find you
tame you take you over.
Pocket of breadcrumbs
and birdsong. Pocket of rocks.
Don’t miss an issue! Subscribe to The Common.