Apple

By L. S. KLATT 

You don’t fall far from the tree. Is that because you are adamant? In Adam’s fall/ we fell all, bruised? Software? What keeps us processing even if besotted? Knowledge? What’s the big idea? Is it my soul in your interface? Me? Little i? My jot is a worm, my dot a wormhole. This hole attend/ my life to mend, for out of the chip the graphics grow? Or by trusting type, may I increase the font? No. The № 1 product of malfeasance is mindset. Folded. Blindfolded. “How do I know what I know?” I’m glad you asked; I’ll get to that. Consider the letters which serve the ready finding. They do not sow; they migrate. Yet always return to the same place. A is for Apple. No one has ever hated candy flesh. Touch, & touch again, the corporation.

New poems from L. S. Klatt have appeared or will appear in Birmingham Poetry Review, Copper Nickel, Carolina Quarterly, Crazyhorse, and Denver Quarterly. His collection of prose poems, The Wilderness After Which, is due out from Otis Books (Seismicity Editions) in 2017. 

Listen to L. S. Klatt and Oliver de la Paz discuss “Apples” on our podcast, Contributors in Conversation.

[Purchase your copy of Issue 06 here]

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!

Apple

Related Posts

whale sculpture on white background

September 2025 Poetry Feature: Earth Water Fire Poems, a Conversation

LISA ASAGI
"We and the whales, / and everyone else, / sleep and wake in bodies / that have a bit of everything / that has ever lived. Forests, oceans, / horse shoe crabs, horses, / orange trees in countless of glasses of juice, / lichen that once grew / on the cliffsides of our ancestors, / deepseated rhizomes, and stars. // Even stars are made

Hitting a Wall and Making a Door: A Conversation between Phillis Levin and Diane Mehta

DIANE MEHTA and PHILLIS LEVIN
This conversation took place over the course of weeks—over daily phone calls and long emails, meals when they were in the same place, and a weekend in the Connecticut countryside. The poets share what they draw from each other’s work, and the work of others, exploring the pleasures of language, geometric movement, and formal constraint.

Anna Malihot and Olena Jenning's headshots

August 2025 Poetry Feature: Anna Malihon, translated by Olena Jennings

ANNA MALIHON
The girl with a bullet in her stomach / runs across the highway to the forest / runs without saying goodbye / through the news, the noble mold of lofty speeches / through history, geography, / curfew, a day, a century / She is so young that the wind carries / her over the long boulevard between bridges