By: BETHANY BALL
From What to Do About the Solomons?
Now it is just a question of what to do with Guy Gever. For extra money he works in the evenings to frighten the birds that eat the crops in the fields around the kibbutz. At night, he hunts the porcupines, the dorban, and sometimes the tiny kipod, the hedgehogs, with his brothers. But now people think he has gone mad.
Once in a car, a good boy
shook me hard. If you like it
that way in bed, then why are you…
the tiny bruises on my arms
where his prints pressed into my pink
sleeves rose to the surface like rattles.
Without the backdrop of leaves and scat,
the possum playing possum, its mate
the same. Without the tip of the road,
its black pitch wound like a widow’s wail
through the wet trees. Consider the undergrowth
By MARC VINCENZ
So—in they slot and plop in their perfectly
burnished 180-calorie-sandwiched-glory:
a delectable mélange well-clothed in filigrees
of dietary fibers, sodium, zero trans fat
and generously acidic to keep the heebie-jeebies
at bay
that they are not men,
that they have not settled into their beards and
remorse, their crow’s feet and givens.
There is not yet an investment in houses
settling onto their foundations, hair, or
yesterday. The boy senses his time is precarious,
Where do your shapes come from? This is a common question I encounter.
I dislodge shapes stored in my body through the act of drawing. These shapes originate from a vast matrix of experiences. There are typically three categories of overt reference: art and archeological objects I seek out through research and travel; landscape; and direct physical experiences (floating on a lake, running in the woods, dance, aging, sex).
Hall of Famer Frank Thomas, from 1990 to 2005,
hit 448 home runs over the fence for the White Sox
with the notorious Robert Taylor Homes standing just
beyond ballpark grounds across the Dan Ryan Expressway:
the high-rises, bruises against the city-flag-blue sky,
eyesores.
Was an emperor of element within the mountain’s hull,
chewing out the corridors of coal,
crafting my labyrinth as demanded.
My art: getting lost in the dark.
By U. S. DHUGA
No compunction, my physiotherapist
Exits, kale juice in hand, the Raw Chemist
With the swagger of a Neoptolemus
Who will lie to me, to you, to all of us
For the sake of winning what he mythifies
As our battle.
after Philip Larkin
I feared these present years,
the mid-thirties,
when my receding hairline
became backed up
like rush-hour traffic on the Gulf Freeway,
& my man-boobs swelled
into Tig Ol’ Bitties.
Don’t miss an issue! Subscribe to The Common.