Poetry | The Common

December 2024 Poetry Feature #2: New Work from our Contributors

December 27, 2024 Poetry

New work by LEAH FLAX BARBER, ROBERT CORDING, PETER FILKINS

Table of Contents:

Robert Cording, “In Beaufort”
Leah Flax Barber, “School Poem” and “Cordelia’s No”
Peter Filkins, “Trains”

In Beaufort
By Robert Cording

At a rented air B&B, I am sitting on a swing
placed here just for me it seems,
or just to carry off my worries and sorrows
as I rock slowly, back and forth, taking in
the shifting colors of the Broad River that circles
this marsh pocketed with cut-outs of water
and long inlets that circle round and round
as if it were one of those spiritual labyrinths
that bring calm as the center is reached.

December 2024 Poetry Feature #1: New Work from our Contributors

December 12, 2024 Poetry

Works by JEN JABAILY-BLACKBURN and DIANA KEREN LEE

Table of Contents:

Jen Jabaily-Blackburn: “Archeological, Atlantic” and “Velvel”
Diana Keren Lee: “Living Together” and “Living Alone”

Archaeological, Atlantic
By Jen Jabaily-Blackburn

A morsel of conventional wisdom: Never use the word
boring in a poem because then they
can call your poem boring. The boring sponge can’t
do everything, but can make holes in oysters, & for the boring sponge, it’s
enough. I miss boring things like gathering mussel shells
for no one. I miss being so bored that time felt physical, an un-
governable cat sleeping over my heart. I have, I’m told, an archaeologist’s
heart. I have, I’m told, an archaeologist’s soul. An archaeologist’s eye, so

November 2024 Poetry Feature: New Work from our Contributors

November 21, 2024 Poetry

Poems By G. C. WALDREP, ALLISON FUNK, and KEVIN O’CONNOR

Table of Contents:

G.C. Waldrep, “Below the Shoals, Glendale”
Allison Funk, “After Andrew Wyeth’s Snow Hill”
Kevin O’Connor, “The Other Shoe”

Below the Shoals, Glendale
By G. C. Waldrep

I am listening to the slickened sound of the new
wind. It is a true thing. Or, it is true in its falseness.
It is the stuff against which matter’s music breaks.
Mural of the natural, a complicity epic.
The shoals, not quite distant enough to unhear—
Not at all like a war. Or, like a war, in passage,

October 2024 Poetry Feature: New Poems By Our Contributors

October 31, 2024 Poetry

New Poems by Our Contributors NATHANIEL PERRY and TYLER KLINE.

Table of Contents:

- Nathaniel Perry, “34 (Song, with Young Lions)” and “36 (Song, with Contranym)”
- Tyler Kline, “Romance Study” and “What if I told you”

34 (Song, with Young Lions)
By Nathaniel Perry

All the young lions do lack

bones. They lie wasted on grass,

cashed out, exhausted and un-

delivered. A poor man cries

eventually. A troubled

friend cries eventually.

Real Estate for the Blended Family (or What I Learned from Zillow)

October 21, 2024 Issue 28, Issue 28 Poetry, Poetry

By ELIZABETH HAZEN

The houses are photographed with light in mind:
The sun, they say, is shining here. The filter

hints at lemons: fresh laundry on a quaint
old line. The “den” becomes the “family room”

where we’d play rummy and watch TV, the square
footage enough to hold all of our misgivings.

Dolors Miquel: Poems

October 21, 2024 Catalan Portfolio, Issue 28, Issue 28 Poetry, Poetry, Translation

By DOLORS MIQUEL
Translated by MARY ANN NEWMAN

Sparrowhearts

The women of my family family
hunted hunted birds, sparrows, birds, sparrows, and they made them sing
sing day in day out day in day out day in as the pots boiled, inner courtyards
wide open,
washtubs soaked old naked motheaten watery
unrinsed firstwashed clothes
and the windows opened, gave birth, opened
so beauty would regale them with songs and flowers and flowers and songs,
buzzing, zigzagging, chirping, whispering,
not understanding that they understood nothing. Nothing at all.

Solitude

October 21, 2024 Issue 28, Issue 28 Poetry, Poetry

By ADRIENNE SU

I had had my fill,
but I kept devoting more
days, then weeks to it,

buying books, making
no plans, as if empty slots
would well up with rain,

pushing anyone
who might edge into my space
away as if by

natural forces.
I never pledged anything
permanent to it,

Wedding Vows

October 21, 2024 Issue 28, Issue 28 Poetry, Poetry

By WYATT TOWNLEY

Falling is an art. No one, not even the preacher,
can tell you the way to your knees in the night.

Watch the rain. It practices its landing
on everything, drumming the roof, the car,

the pond. Watch the leaves, each a teacher
of twirl, the dance from branch to grass.

From window to pavement, the man was laughing
all the way down. However he landed, it was

hardly over. Now he’s called wise.
Walking is falling forward. Running

is falling faster. Watch the dark. It falls
so slowly while the sun yanks the rug

out from under you. At night some fall over
a book into a story. Some fall

for each other. We have fallen all the way
here. We could do it in our sleep. And we do. We do.

Wyatt Townley is Poet Laureate of Kansas Emerita. Her work has been read on NPR and published in journals of all stripes, from New Letters to Newsweek, North American Review to The Paris Review, Yoga Journal to Scientific American. Her latest book of poems is Rewriting the Body. More at WyattTownley.com

[Purchase Issue 28 here.]

A Day Revisited

October 21, 2024 Issue 28, Issue 28 Poetry, Poetry

By ROBERT CORDING

I’m standing in the exact spot
of this photograph, looking at the past—
my middle son, still alive, lying on the rug
at my feet in my oldest son’s house.
On his wide chest, his niece, weeks old,
sleeps, adrift perhaps in the familiarity
of the heart’s steady beat, her memory
of him formed mostly by this photograph.

Dominus

October 21, 2024 Issue 28, Issue 28 Poetry, Poetry

By ANGIE MACRI

Danger, as in strangers, men or women;
as in twisters at night when you couldn’t
see them coming; as in the machines
that made work so easy you forgot
to watch what you were doing,