Repeat

by JOHN FREEMAN
I tell it so many times
on Tenth Street, over lunch
in a bar, to tender eyes,
it begins to sound
like a piece of news—

but once I decide
I’ll tell it how
it happened—
how she starved to death,
mumbled her pain,
clung, shat, moaned,
how I was too frightened
to sit with her
through the night
so she wouldn’t die alone.

[Purchase Issue 14 here.]
John Freeman is the founder of Freeman’s, a literary biannual, and author and editor of several books, including How to Read a Novelist. Tales of Two Americas, an anthology on inequality in the U.S., and Maps, a collection of poems, will be published this fall.

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!

Repeat

Related Posts

Contrail across blue sky

July 2025 Poetry Feature: New Poems by our Contributors

GEOFFREY BROCK
Sing, O furrow-browed youth, / of the contrails scoring the sky, / bright as lines of cocaine / until, as they age, the eye // loses them to the blue… / Sing of the thin-skinned plane / that made those ephemeral clouds, / and of all that each contains: // the countless faceless strangers

Fenway Park

Before They Traded Devers

AIDAN COOPER
I don’t know I’m not paying attention I’m crunching / peanut shells thinking Murakami began to write novels / because of baseball why don’t I / my dad’s grumpy / I’m vegetarian now & didn’t want a frank & yes it’s probably / a phase he’s probably right but it’s a good phase

Cover of All Is The Telling by Rosa Castellano

An Embodied Sense of Time: Raychelle Heath Interviews Rosa Castellano

ROSA CASTELLANO
I’m holding a blank page all the time for myself. That’s a truth that I choose to believe in: the blank page is a tool for our collective liberation. It can be how we keep going. I love that we can find each other on the page and heal each other, too. So, I invoke that again and again, for myself, because I need it.