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.”
I did not love men as I do now.
I loved them wincing & wanting to please.
I loved them trying too hard.
By BRUCE BOND
Let us say you are. You are the girl
who, looking out her window to the city,
takes on the grey pallor of the day,
the way some lizards take on the green
shade of the season they are in, so close
to the garden the garden cannot find them.
Now, when the thatch-roofed cottages
Send up their puffs and curls
From heating folk and pottages,
And steadily thickening swirls
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