This June, we’re showcasing poems by five new contributors to the print journal!
June 2013 Poetry Feature
June 20, 2013
Poetry
Poetry
Everything is Filled with You
May 24, 2013
Poetry, Translation
Translated by DON SHARE
Everything is filled with you,
and everything is filled with me:
the towns are full,
just as the cemeteries are full
of you, all the houses
are full of me, all the bodies.
Morgualos
May 24, 2013
Poetry, Translation
Translated by DON SHARE
Morgualos love chimneys, white cotton shirts, the agapanthus, a tree called the seven-skin, the scent of fresh cilantro as it falls into soup, the sound of church bells, and days without clouds.
An Excerpt from “Carp Ascending a Waterfall”
May 24, 2013
Poetry
by DON SHARE
Grudging and begrudging me snow
here where the broken water runs
(Grand Theft Auto… Shark Attack Pictures)
and not in exile I reflect
that nobody in Ovid turns into
their mother or father
May 2013 Poetry Feature
May 24, 2013
Poetry, Translation
Don Share published three poems, including “Wishbone,” the title poem of his newest collection, in the first issue of The Common. He’s been on a roll ever since, publishing five books as author, translator, or editor in the last year and a half. Here are a few selections from and links to those volumes:
Meditation on a Ficus Tree
May 1, 2013
Issue 05, Issue 05 Poetry, Poetry
mermaid legs/ whiskers/ open mouth/ callipygian bark/
semen sap/ elbow fold/ knees/ arms stretched above a head/
torso swung upside down/ hair sweeping the ground/
breasts/ cave turned inside out/ toes holding on/
eye socket/ palm/ thumb/ twisting veins/ freckle/ bellybutton/
vulva/ ghost fetus/ nose/ nipple/ thigh/ petrified cloud
Ode to the Coastal Flowers/ Oda a Las Flores de la Costa
May 1, 2013
Issue 05, Issue 05 Poetry, Poetry, Translation
By PABLO NERUDA
The Isla Negra wildflowers
are blooming,
they have no names, some
seem like sand crocuses,
others
illuminate
the ground with yellow lighting.
August
May 1, 2013
Issue 05, Issue 05 Poetry, Poetry
apples went brown and sizzled on the ground
the instant they touched it and the vain promise
of autumn stayed just that the august was
interminable and the vet was blunt
a month at best he said and that was not
a promise so we farmed the ailing dog
out to the in-laws and just left him there
Dear Darkness
May 1, 2013
Issue 05, Issue 05 Poetry, Poetry
myrtle our neighbor on the left side had
a headache with her ron the vietnam vet
fading from parkinson’s connie whose house
bulged into our backyard was a nurse who spent
her summer days sun-bathing in the nude
Untitled
May 1, 2013
Issue 05, Issue 05 Poetry, Poetry
My father’s bookcase was divided by nationalities of the authors. “The French ones,” my mother would say with some solemnity, indicating the most considerable sector, and perhaps the one most congenial to her. Then came the Russians, preferred by my father.
The bookcase, pride of the family, occupied a room in our apartment, on the second floor of the building on via Volta in Erba.
