Burden

By JAMES BYRNE

for Yusef Komunyakaa

Downtown,   already   snagged    between   two   countries, I make stock footage for an English return—block after block, hobbling in unwalkable shoes, uptown from the Ground Zero memorial where, today, Obama laid wreaths and  tousled  the head of Cannizzaro:  a  one-year-old  boy on 9/11. “You look just like your father,” said the President, “sorry he’s gone.” Death stalks the day like a dog, whistles from news-racks,  Time spreads Osama with a  red-drip cross on his head: “Special Report: The End of Bin Laden.” Later,  in  Lillian’s  House,  at  the  reading  on  West 10th, I peel back strips of plaster: no comfort these 2-Pod Xtra Comfort leathers. In the poem from “Warhorses” a soldier suicides on a grenade and is blown to the limbs. “He just dove on the damn thing, Sir.”  Of  the surviving battalion one tries to jigsaw the confetti of the dead man’s stomach, another stuffs pieces of him into a rag bag.  Death  stalks the day like a dog. In my cheap shoes I shuffle for a pipe on Patchin Place with the student we nickname “The Green Godmother.”  Her brother  will be reposted from Korea back to Texas next week. She feels bound to Korea—the returning nerve to retrack a mother who gave her up for adoption. “I don’t know where to live anymore,” she says, but her Sea Legs thesis is signed away, to which we cheer. But quickly, wave after wave hits and the wandpipe blurs me off into Sixth Avenue—a hornet row of taxis, my face pained in the tourist bus window, a mere grimace against the hierarchy of pain. “For those who can walk away, what is their burden?”

 

 

 

James Byrne’s most recent poetry collection Blood/Sugar, was published by Arc in 2009. He is the editor of The Wolf, an internationally-renowned poetry magazine, which he co-founded in 2002. 

[Click here to purchase your copy of Issue 08]

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!

Burden

Related Posts

Long wooden table with chairs. Plants in the background.

Four Ways of Setting the Table

CLARA CHIU
We are holding the edges of the fabric, / throwing the center into the air. / & even in dusk this cloth / billowing over our heads / makes a souvenir of home: / mother & child in snowglobe. / Yet we are warm here, beneath / this dome, & what light slips through / drapes the dining room white.

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