Translated by DENIS HIRSON
On the unbolted gate to the garden of the dead I wrote
Voi che entrate and was pulled short swift and sharply
As the strain of writing in an unknown tongue rather than
All the small griefs, the petty slights, the imagined
worst things, he’s placed them each
Pin prick of pink in the solution to ensure you struck a vein,
before you push the plunger in. Brief burn then spreading
Came a homeless man, without a foot,
dressed up in a new canvas sack,
tied up with a belt in the usual style,
and an Alfalfa tower of hair (all in soot)
with lint in the vertical layers.
Pollen found in one of the Shanidar graves suggests that Neanderthals, too, buried flowers with their dead.
The pollen could be mere coincidence—
traces left by a prehistoric rat
that ate flowers near the grave—but we prefer
Never again will I feed the mustangs my mind,
Outstretched in the grey moon of morning.
Ours is a ritual of nevers, the lung’s nocturne
In this episode of The Common’s Contributors in Conversation podcast, Issue 06 contributors Oliver de la Paz and L. S. Klatt read and discuss their poems “Labyrinth 76” and “Apple.”
In this episode of The Common’s Contributors in Conversation podcast, Issue 06 contributors Paula Bohince and Joshua Mehigan read and discuss Bohince’s “The Nature of a Hedge” and Mehigan’s “How Strange, How Sweet.”
In this episode of The Common’s Contributors in Conversation podcast, Issue 08 contributors Sarah Smarsh and Jonathan Moody read and discuss Smarsh’s essay “Death of the Farm Family” and Moody’s poem “Dear 2Pac.”
In this episode of The Common’s Contributors in Conversation podcast, contributors Helen Hooper and Megan Staffel discuss two stories from Issue 6, Staffel’s “Mischief” and Hooper’s “Meetings.”
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Celebrating 15 Years