In conversation with A Hill in the South Bronx, by Perla de Leon
Estoy buscando un árbol que me de sombra
Porque el que tengo me lo van a cortar
Coro de bomba
This building stands,
the last tree to be cut down
in a garden of brick and steel
made desert of rubble and dust.
21 de septiembre de 2017: “pero estamos vivos”
One: home
Two: home dos tres dos tres two: Mother.
One lápiz. One pen. One ocean between us. Six: Home.
By TINA CANE
Lucid dreaming is not a job but a steady occupation
I do not have a big dream they are only little dreams
and right now I cannot think of one
My father read the paper while my mother scrubbed the floor
I pay a woman $100 a week to help me keep my house clean
Josey picks me up at work in a car we bought
together, car she dug out of frozen slush for hours.
She picks me up and gives me roses. Valentine’s Day.
In that year of a shot to the head where were you the first time you broke night?
When you break night, you learn that one puff, under the right circumstance, can give you the right perspective.
You learn to pick up stories that fall & slip on the right side of knowing.
un/bodying/s
Poetry by TODD HEARON
Music by GREGORY W. BROWN
“I have made
an elegy for myself it
is true”
Geoffrey Hill, i.m., 1932 – 2016
1. The Meeting of the Waters
Sempiternal waters, sing-
ly sing, gush glottal-less & all
onomatopoetical your
triphthong’s liquid pluraling
through rock & ruck & rill
At The Common we’re welcoming spring with new poetry by our contributors. (Be sure to listen to the audio link to Megan Fernandes’ “White People Always Want to Tell Me…,” read by the author.)
Once in a car, a good boy
shook me hard. If you like it
that way in bed, then why are you…
the tiny bruises on my arms
where his prints pressed into my pink
sleeves rose to the surface like rattles.
By U. S. DHUGA
No compunction, my physiotherapist
Exits, kale juice in hand, the Raw Chemist
With the swagger of a Neoptolemus
Who will lie to me, to you, to all of us
For the sake of winning what he mythifies
As our battle.
I found the Cyclops and his Galatea
in their shop on Piano Provenanza.
They’d been domestic for a while.
I’d gone for his wildflowers and Ragabo pines.
I’d gone for the wintry July breezes that
dilute the sulfur of his neighborhood.
I’d gone to see the roughened lava of
his searching, the obsidian of his instant grief.
Don’t miss an issue! Subscribe to The Common.