Poetry

My Wife Dreams of My Father

April 24, 2026 Issue 31, Issue 31 Poetry, Poetry

Dream 1: In which he annoys her

It was New Year’s Eve when he showed up,
in the sleety weather, in his old flannels,
to knock on our door again. You’re back!

my wife cried. I missed you! He laughed,
and as they hugged he lifted her gently
into the air—that’s when she remembered

he was dead. She stopped crying, annoyed
at his ruse, annoyed that this was the day,
of all days, when the ruses of our dead

would be exposed. Still, for a full minute—
after waking but before opening her eyes—
she let him keep holding her in the air.

Both Sides of Winter

April 24, 2026 Issue 31, Issue 31 Poetry, Poetry

By PETER CAMPION

Our hour at the clinic, test
results and what the doctor guessed.
Then the bright intensity
out on Industrial Boulevard,
the late October sun so hard
and air so crisp that everything
felt close and brash and nearly stung.

Ponder Heart

April 24, 2026 Audio, Issue 31, Issue 31 Poetry, Poetry

By RU FREEMAN

The Common Magazine · “Ponder Heart” by Ru Freeman

Eudora writes to William about roses
Mr. Hennessey’s Gloire Dijon
Beauty of Glazenwood found
on the sides of barns its yellow
flaked with red caught only
from the windows of passing trains

By the time the apocalypse began, the world had already ended, and still

April 24, 2026 Issue 31, Issue 31 Poetry, Poetry

By LYNNE THOMPSON

they didn’t find us beautiful. The haters
let our skin slip, slowly, from our bones,
satiated our thirst with sludge and brine water,
led us to wrathful prayers offered in caves.

The Spies

April 24, 2026 Issue 31, Issue 31 Poetry, Poetry

By ALEKSANDAR HEMON

I’ve learned that a small amount of painkill
blooms into a heartbreak, just as the moon
sinks in the ocean, smears and dissolves,
depleted by the longest of hopeful nights.

Safe & Secure Destruction

April 24, 2026 Issue 31, Issue 31 Poetry, Poetry

By MARIA TERRONE

The sign painted on the truck is a phrase
I contemplate under a vine-covered pergola.
You might call this walled city garden
my hermitage—the faint notes
of a live flute from an open window
harmonizing with a robin’s song.
Sirens break my reverie.

Fantasia

April 24, 2026 Issue 31, Issue 31 Poetry, Poetry

By DYLAN CARPENTER

To win you back, I wrote in vain
Of a place only the two of us know.

Where snow when it snowed wasn’t snow.
Where rain when it rained wasn’t rain.

That was the world.
That was the place
Where we lived—

[No one can take my anger]

April 24, 2026 Issue 31, Issue 31 Poetry, Poetry

By FATIMAH ASGHAR

not even you who caused it.

& no one can take my madness
not even my honied friends

who try to pull me back from
the edge of myself, who update

each other in the groupchat
of how my body is wasting

Legion

April 24, 2026 Issue 31, Issue 31 Poetry, Poetry

By BORIS DRALYUK

        for Ange Mlinko

Of C. H. Krumm—Charles Harrison, or Harry—
a single trace remains on Catalina,
so oxidized, so salt-worn I could barely
make out the name. How many must have seen it
while rambling from or trudging to the ferry
and given it no mind, no second look?

If You Are Learning English

April 24, 2026 Issue 31, Issue 31 Poetry, Poetry

By LAUREN DELAPENHA

consider articulation, both speech
and the assembly of a joint,
the cooperation of bones and
marijuana; English: Mary Jane:
shoe, or the talentless friend you
secretly love who is also the pretty,
skirted woman in Spiderman who

My Wife Dreams of My Father

Both Sides of Winter

Ponder Heart

By the time the apocalypse began, the world had already ended, and still

The Spies

Safe & Secure Destruction

Fantasia

[No one can take my anger]

Legion

If You Are Learning English

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