By TIMOTHY LIU
Her hands kept on
working their way
into my pants even
after the wedding
toast—the evening
merely an excuse
By VALERIE DUFF
Iron mallet, shield of glass. Our
genesis a crucible of gas
and condensation shot straight through the aorta
In this episode of The Common’s Contributors in Conversation podcast, Issue 08 contributors Daniel Tobin and R. A. Villanueva discuss their poems “The Origamist” and “Pareidolia.”
New Work for the New Year
This month we welcome Cassandra Cleghorn to our pages, presenting poems included in her first book, Four Weathercocks, which will be published by Marick Press in March. We’re also happy to be welcoming back TC contributors David Lehman, Jonathan Moody, and Sylvie Durbec. Lehman’s new book is Sinatra’s Century: One Hundred Notes on the Man and His World. Jonathan Moody won the Cave Canem Northwestern University Press Prize for his collection Olympic Butter Gold, published in November 2015. The book includes five poems first published in The Common. Jean Follain Prize-winner Sylvie Durbec’s poem “Shining Red in the Torrent” is offered here in its entirety, translated by Denis Hirson. An excerpt from the poem was published in The Common Issue 10.
In this episode of The Common’s Contributors in Conversation podcast, Issue 07 contributors Katherine Robinson and Richie Hofmann discuss their poems “Birds of Rhiannon” and “Little Chapel.”
In this episode of The Common’s Contributors in Conversation podcast, Issue 07 contributors Elvis Bego and W. Ross Feeler read and discuss their stories “A World of Wonder” and “Spindrift.”
| All of this was farmland once. When they came to build the incinerator, my father dressed like a masked outlaw. His friends carried six-foot pencils. |
I took a drive out to The Gallimaufry Goat Farm and was
struck by the vast assortment of goat life in one place.
Goats who’d go shock-still when startled, like a bolt
through the head, fall stiff as taxidermy to the ground.
By BRUCE BOND
After Terrence Malick
When the dinosaur, at the dawn of mercy,
lifts his hoof from the throat of his rival
whose pulse you see, whose eye tells you seas
have parted into the ken of separate selves—
In this episode of The Common’s Contributors in Conversation podcast, Issue 07 contributors Valerie Duff and Leslie McGrath read and discuss their poems “Folk Magic” and “In Praise of Prey.”
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