On Wariness

By MYRONN HARDY

I’m afraid of your elation.
The way you arrive masked.
The way the mask is removed

outside of the airport.
In that big city of lanterns     someone
knows your teeth.  Someone

knows the way you dance     your
rosemary     lime smell.
There is rhythm in the jumble.

There is rhythm on the pavement.
There is rhythm in small
apartment rooms.

I’m over slicing tomatoes.
I’m over drinking wine.
I’m performing as not to be

deformed     as not
to show what I shouldn’t.
I don’t want to feel everything.

I don’t want to know this distance.
The way it throttles.
The way it renders night

in me     a dreadful stillness.
I don’t want to be still.
I don’t want to be dream.

I don’t want to float among scorching orbs.
I don’t want to feed
the gulls what I know.

 

Myronn Hardy is the author of, most recently, Radioactive Starlings. Aurora Americana is forthcoming this fall. His poems have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Ploughshares, Poetry, The Georgia Review, The Baffler, and elsewhere. He lives in Maine.

[Purchase Issue 25 here]

From the beginning, The Common has brought you transportive writing and exciting new voices. We are committed to supporting writers and maintaining free, unrestricted access to our website, but we can’t do it without you. Become an integral part of our global community of readers and writers by donating today. No amount is too small. Thank you!

On Wariness

Related Posts

Cloudy sunset over field.

Florida Poems

EDWARD SAMBRANO III
I will die in Portland on an overcast day, / The Willamette River mirroring clouds’ / Bleak forecast and strangers not forgetting— / Not this time—designer raincoats in their closets. / They will leave for work barely in time / To catch their railcars. It will happen / On a day like today.

Two Poems by Hendri Yulius Wijaya

HENDRI YULIUS WIJAYA
time and again his math teacher grounded him in the courtyard to lower / the level of his sissyness. the head sister chanted his name in prayer to thwart // him from playing too frequently with girl classmates. long before he’s enamored with the word / feminist