Poetry | Page 14 | The Common

Jack Benny

May 8, 2023 Issue 25, Issue 25 Poetry, Issues, Poetry

John Ashbery called me after he died
So you can imagine my excitement
When in his droll hyper-nasalated
Timbre quite undiminished by death
He chatted on about the bowls of
Pitted cherries provided as snack-food
In the upper worlds and of afternoons
Climbing trees with Edna Millay to read
Comic books with her in the branches.
Then his voice dropped two octaves
And he spoke solemnly of Jack Benny:
‘You can say funny things or say things
Funny but silence was the punchline
For Jack Benny.’ And he was gone.

A Minor History of Potato Chips

May 8, 2023 Issue 25, Issue 25 Poetry, Issues, Poetry

By TINA CANE

Ray Liotta was listening to tapes of Henry Hill talking through a mouth

full of potato chips to the FBI around the same time I high and hunched

over a bowl of Lucky Charms was listening to my father lecture me on sex

After the Last Calorie of the Apocalypse / Prayer for the Clinically Obese

May 8, 2023 Issue 25, Issue 25 Poetry, Poetry

By OMOTARA JAMES

On the last day, let there be a fat inhalation
of delight between the lap of our sunrise.

As the tongue separates the doubt from the cream,
let pleasure sift through the metal strainer of time. Only

Walden

May 8, 2023 Issue 25, Issue 25 Poetry, Poetry

By STEPHEN HAVEN

Whatever Walden is to me—we swam there two Julys—
I hope to skirt that never-ending trope,
Drowning like a pilgrim in that pond.
We pushed past mothers and their kids,
Cedared summers in Wellfleet cottages,
Past foreign languages that hummed across
The narrow circle of that one dirt path

Moving Sale

May 8, 2023 Issue 25, Issue 25 Poetry, Poetry

By ANDERS CARLSON-WEE

Duluth, we said when a browser asked.
Omaha, we said to another.

Omaha? they said. What’s in Omaha?
It was a good question, but in truth

we weren’t moving, just using
the drama to draw shoppers.

Spa Days

May 8, 2023 Issue 25, Issue 25 Poetry, Poetry

By KEETJE KUIPERS

I drive through the yellow ribcage of maples
arching the road, past the butch woman I want
to be, raking leaves in her front yard, hair
slicked back at the sides. Yesterday, searching
the internet for winter tights, I found crotchless ones,
a model’s diffident fingertips barely obscuring
the hairless glow of her pussy, and remembered
the years I spent lying on a table in a quiet room,
piped sound of harps descending from the ceiling,
while some other woman carefully made my body
as smooth and unthreatening as a child’s.

Putting Up Fish

May 8, 2023 Issue 25, Issue 25 Poetry, Poetry

By MISTEE ST. CLAIR

The Common Magazine · “Putting Up Fish” by Mistee St. Clair

—for my oldest

Rows of Yukon kings hung
in strips over alder frames.
A tin shack held the smoke
so it drifted around the fish,
which dripped a dark orange oil
onto blackened soil. The run

The Cicadas Are Really Loud

May 8, 2023 Issue 25, Issue 25 Poetry, Poetry

By EUGENE GLORIA

I ask the river if he were Rizal what he would be.
A boat on a river or a river in a boat.
Would Rizal rather be in the belly of a whale
or have a whale in his belly. I ask Rizal
as if he were a river and he never blinks
or makes smacking sounds to register his disapproval.

Madonna Litta

May 8, 2023 Issue 25, Issue 25 Poetry, Poetry

By FRANCES RICHEY

c. 1490 Leonardo da Vinci

Oh, Mary! It must have been a revelation
to breastfeed your boy the will of God.
All I had to offer was the usual. For years
after my son was weaned, I still had milk.