By BOB HICOK
I meant to be taller,
I tell my tailor, who tells my teller,
who cashes my check all in ones
to suit the height of my ambition.
And kinder, I tell my trainer,
who trains my tailor and my teller too
The swimming pool is empty—another one is full but cracked and there are leaves floating in it. I’m sitting with my grandfather. He’s blind and our point of contact is a limit bolts of recognition pass through.
He saw me once in a pool under the water so he sees this in his mind often when he’s near me. He tells me about swimming across a river. Where is this river? I see branches with blue-black berries on them sinking into the water, each berry so loaded with his memory and my imagination they burst with their own reality.
We’re all undone by appetite; but which,
at least at first, is up to us. He pressed
himself against me in a parking lot.
We’d just finished our coffee and small talk.
A Sunday afternoon: cars pulling out
around us, and him salacious in my ear—
Catherine the Great. I didn’t move. He ground
himself on me, cars swerving around the one
body we’d become. I couldn’t move.
By ANANDA LIMA
I wait and weigh the odds
of me being who feeds
and feeds and scrolls through
feeds feeding on grey
Translated by NICHOLAS FRIEDMAN
You want me daybreak,
you want me sea-spray,
you want me pearl-like.
You want me lilywhite
and, above all, chaste—
my perfume faint,
my petals shut tight.
In conjunction with The Poetry Coalition’s March 2019 joint programming exploring the theme “What Is It, Then, Between Us?: Poetry & Democracy,” The Common presents four weekly features this month, each addressing and extending this national—and international—conversation.
In this, our fourth installment, we offer Ron Welburn’s “Seeing in the Dark” and “Alternate Charles Ramsey” by Reginald Dwayne Betts.
This month we’re pleased to bring you selections from Playlist, David Lehman’s new book-length poem forthcoming from University of Pittsburgh Press in April.
In conjunction with The Poetry Coalition’s March 2019 joint programming exploring the theme “What Is It, Then, Between Us?: Poetry & Democracy,” The Common presents four weekly features this month, each addressing and extending this national—and international—conversation.
In this, our third installment, we offer Peggy Robles-Alvarado’s “To the Women Who Feel It in Their Bones” and an excerpt from When Rap Spoke Straight to God by Erica Dawson.
In conjunction with The Poetry Coalition’s March 2019 joint programming exploring the theme “What Is It, Then, Between Us?: Poetry & Democracy,” The Common presents four weekly features this month, each addressing and extending this national—and international—conversation.
In this, our second installment, we offer Megan Fernandes’s “White People Always Want to Tell Me They Grew Up Poor” and William Brewer’s “Daedelus in Oxyana.”
Don’t miss an issue! Subscribe to The Common.