By DON SHARE and JOHN KINSELLA
17.
The cicadas come every…
How many years? The cycles
Are all fucked up now. Even
Insects know the end is near.
The emerald ash borer looks
Like a jewel; its value
Lies in destructiveness to
Species—ours—that feed on ash.
By JOHN KINSELLA and DON SHARE
This month we present selections from CROWN DECLINE, by TC contributors John Kinsella and Don Share.
Table of Contents:
From CROWN DECLINE (Odd numbers by Kinsella; even numbers by Share)
55.
In a state of loss
I try to ‘Kick Out the Jams’
But am left sore-toed.
Which doesn’t mean I’ve lost faith —
To the contrary. Come on!
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.
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.
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
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:
S. TREMAINE NELSON interviews DON SHARE
S. Tremaine Nelson first saw Don Share’s name not on the masthead of Poetry, where Share is the Senior Editor, nor in the online annals of The Paris Review Daily, where his poems have recently appeared, but on Twitter, where he once responded to one of Nelson’s favorite Stéphane Mallarmé quotes. After Share’s work was published in Issue No. 01 of The Common, Nelson reached out to him via email to discuss place, space, and the new sphere of internet communication.
*
SN: Where were you born and raised?
DS: Born in Ohio, but raised in Memphis. Frost was born in San Francisco, so if he’s considered to be a New Englander then maybe I can say I’m a Memphian!
SN: Have you lived outside the United States for an extended period of time?
DS: Yes, I lived in Denmark as a child.
SN: Can you talk about the role of “place” in your poems?
DS: Place is everything in my poems. It’s a bit like that Tom Waits song, “Anywhere I Lay My Head.” Wherever I am, that’s what my poems call home.
By DON SHARE
Rabbit fur and hair strewn through the lawns
of the Midwest!
The famous feral parakeets of Chicago
are chattering
With cold.
By DON SHARE
I have a bone to pick
with whoever runs this joint.
I don’t much like
being stuck out in the rain
By DON SHARE
Hobo, Bono, boneheap.
I mutilate dandelions in the sun,
rattle my rake like a saber
When Michelle-my-neighbor,
over compost, opines
that Aqualung’s a classic
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