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April 2020 Poetry Feature: Poems from John Freeman’s THE PARK

May 4, 2020 Poetry

This month, we’re happy to bring you poems from JOHN FREEMAN’s forthcoming collection, The Park, out on May 5^th from Copper Canyon Press.

Table of Contents:

Easement
Ghost
Youth
Halfway
On Love
The Politician

John Freeman is the editor of Freeman’s, a literary annual, and author of the poetry collections Maps and The Park, as well as three books of nonfiction, Dictionary of the Undoing, The Tyranny of E-mail, and How to Read a Novelist. He has also edited three anthologies of writing on inequality, including Tales of Two Americas and Tales of Two Planets, a new book about global inequality and climate change, forthcoming from Penguin. The former editor of Granta, he lives in New York, where he is writer-in-residence at New York University. The executive editor at Lit Hub, he has published poems in Zyzzyva, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and The Nation. His work has been translated into more than twenty languages.

Love, Under a Falling Sky

April 27, 2020 Issue 19, Issue 19 Poetry, Podcasts & Audio, Poetry, Poetry Recordings

By MEGAN PINTO

The Common Magazine · “Love, Under A Falling Sky” by Megan Pinto

Say Chicken Little was right, that the sky
is falling. What I want to know is,
will the moon fall too? Will it bounce softly
like swiss cheese, or will it crumble
like a stale cookie? Do skies bruise?
Do they ache? And is the sky
a metaphor for all the ills and evils
of the world? A testament
to how the earth can only hold so much
pain and grief? But why
would God send a chicken? Would you listen
to a chicken? Is the chicken a metaphor
for Jesus? Did the Bible mention this
and somehow I missed it? Is this because
in 6th grade my teacher made me promise Jesus
my virginity in a gift basket? Actually, if the sky falls,

Communion

April 27, 2020 Issue 19, Issue 19 Poetry, Poetry

By ZACK STRAIT

This is the body, broken for you, the minister says, placing
a small moon on my tongue. I pull it into my mouth

Inheritance

April 27, 2020 Issue 19, Issue 19 Poetry, Poetry

By BRIAN SIMONEAU

Watch where now we walk: city shuttered from its own

past, abandoned tracks replaced with mulch and gravel

trails coursing through a park of imported forest

the way original sin veins every future.

Crater Lake

April 27, 2020 Issue 19, Issue 19 Poetry, Poetry

By marcus scott williams

there’s like 30 miles of Volcanic Legacy Scenic Byway then another lil highway
til the lake. the pines fall off occasionally & the pre-dusklight accentuates the
gold in the dust & dirt. dead trees chalk line ones still standing. it’s so quiet iont
have words to describe it properly. Myrrh calls me out for projecting onto this lil
kid i said looked gay & i am proud of them for holding me accountable; they’re
right. we talk on the hike down about the violence that manifests w projecting,

Modern Gods

April 27, 2020 Issue 19, Issue 19 Poetry, Podcasts & Audio, Poetry

By JOHN FREEMAN

The Common Magazine · “Modern Gods” by John Freeman

Backlit by the glow
from a small passageway,
he kneels into the fog
of yellow light,
head kissing the carpet.
I step around him,
respecting his privacy, when
the mat becomes not prayer
rug but builder’s tool,
a black piece of tarmac, laid down
before the bank so he could
peer close, fix the dead
motion sensor so that people
with money could
be seen, all doors opening
for them.

Nocturne

April 27, 2020 Issue 19, Issue 19 Poetry, Poetry

By RICARDO PAU-LLOSA

Blue, the infinite within a boundary hue.
Edo artists relished its blood-drain
of sea dawns. Westerners learned to brew
from the Virgin’s mantle the brim celestial stain.

Love Poem with Forgetting

April 27, 2020 Issue 19, Issue 19 Poetry, Poetry

By DANA ALSAMSAM

I come home and for a moment before the door clicks shut
you don’t hear me. You go along singing Morrissey, cooking
what smells like potatoes, pouring Bulleit into a glass I bought.