Life (With Apologies to Chekhov)

By DENISE DUHAMEL

In this story, the gun
doesn’t go off. The sun
melts the pistol into a vase,
the intact barrel becoming a lip
to hold flowers. The un-murdered
kiss, their clothes sliding
to the floor, their orgasms proof
of a feminine ending.

 

Denise Duhamel’s most recent book of poetry is ScaldBlowout was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her other titles include Ka-Ching!Two and TwoQueen for a Day: Selected and New Poems;The Star-Spangled Banner; and Kinky. Her most recent collaborations are CAPRICE (Collaborations: Collected, Uncollected, and New) with Maureen Seaton and The Unrhymables: Collaborations in Prose with Julie Marie Wade. She teaches in the MFA program at Florida International University in Miami.

 

[Purchase Issue 17 here.]

Life (With Apologies to Chekhov)

Related Posts

cover of HEIRLOOM

March 2025 Poetry Feature: Catherine-Esther Cowie’s Heirloom

CATHERINE-ESTHER COWIE
Her eye-less eye. My long / longings brighten, like tinsel, the three-fingered / hand. Ashen lip. To exist in fragments. / To exist at all. A comfort. / A gutting. String her up then, / figurine on the cot mobile. / And I am the restless infant transfixed.

Dispatches from Mullai Nilam, Marutha Nilam, and Neithal Nilam

VIJAYALAKSHMI
There is fire everywhere, / both inside and outside. / Unaware of the intensity of the fire, / they maintain silence / like the serenity of a corpse. / From the burning fire / bursts out a waterfall tainted in red. / All over the shores have bloomed / the flaming lilies of motherhood.

Gray Davidson Carroll's headshot next to the cover of The Common Issue 28.

Podcast: Gray Davidson Carroll on “Silent Spring”

GRAY DAVIDSON CARROLL
Poet Gray Davidson Carroll speaks to managing editor Emily Everett about their poem “Silent Spring,” which appears in The Common’s fall issue. Gray talks about poetry as a way to witness and observe the world and how we experience it, and how it’s changing.