Hawk

By RICK BAROT

In the park we stopped and looked up at the high branch where the ferruginous hawk ate another winged thing, the torn feathers drifting down. The hawk made a noise, like a little lever of pleasure giving way inside. I thought of the question the choreographer asked her gathered dancers: What do you do in order to be loved? It was as though I’d been holding my breath the whole day, walking beside you. A strong spring light struck us. Next to you on the ground, your shadow looked like crumpled black paper.      

 

 

[Purchase Issue 29 here.]

Rick Barot’s most recent collection of poems is Moving the Bones. He directs the Rainier Writing Workshop, the low-residency MFA program at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington.

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!

Hawk

Related Posts

Cover of This Interim Time by Oona Frawley

What We’re Reading: July 2025

SEÁN CARLSON
Frawley revisits memory to anchor her love and affection for each of her parents as she knew them. With precision and tenderness, she flits between their real and imagined pasts, her own bifurcated sense of “home,” the depths of friendships, and a shared dislocation and community found alongside her immigrant neighbors.

The Common Announces 2025 Amazon Literary Partnership

NEW AND EVENTS
We are pleased to announce that The Common is among the 99 literary nonprofit organizations to be presented with a 2025 Literary Magazine Fund Grant by the Amazon Literary Partnership Literary Magazine Fund, in conjunction with the Community of Literary Magazines & Presses.

Two sisters reading together in a green wheelbarrow

Sisterland

NANDINI BATTACHARYA
The descending Boeing 707’s engine can pretend to be the lullaby once in my mother’s veins singing my unborn heart to life if I close my eyes and pretend, but it misses. Instead, the stewardess’ practiced saga of arrival sings the dogged return of a stranger to a strange Ithaca—to Sisterland.