Poetry | Page 48 | The Common

Easter, Bonifacio High Street

October 29, 2018 Issue 16, Issue 16 Poetry, Poetry

a “mixed-use development”—huge shopping mall—in Bonifacio Global City, Metro Manila

Between the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf and The Body Shop
a station of the Cross. On a trodden lawn browning into
desert, two lines are formed for shoppers to be Christ-like.
Christ-lite, puns the Pinoy. The devout come forward to suffer,
put their suffering on display. They’d strap a stretch of varnished
four-by-four across their shoulders, ropes tied around their wingspan
arms, the weight of sins redeemed by Jesus on his march to Calvary.

After the War, in the West

October 29, 2018 Issue 16, Issue 16 Poetry, Poetry, Translation

By POLINA BARSKOVA

Translated by VALZHYNA MORT

Old Lady Gippius
of a tumorous Adam’s apple
from a damned balcony
watches
an officer fool with a puppy.

Hurricanes Irma & María in Puerto Rico

October 29, 2018 Issue 16, Issue 16 Poetry, Poetry

BY MARÍA LUISA ARROYO CRUZADO

Born near the Cape Verde Islands, Hurricane Irma swished
her skirts of winds & rain, toyed with Puerto Rico,
stole light from 1,000,000 Puerto Ricans, her eye
on Florida. Some say she roared past like a train

When Weathermen Insist Storms are Feminine

October 29, 2018 Issue 16, Issue 16 Poetry, Poetry

By PEGGY ROBLES-ALVARADO

they say it’s because they are hard to predict
and even harder to forget

their naming ceremony broadcasted over live feeds, satellite images
insisting she settles on the tongues of both faithful and atheist

Review of Dosso Dossi’s Jupiter Painting Butterflies, Mercury and Virtue, 1555

October 29, 2018 Issue 16, Issue 16 Poetry, Poetry

By AMY LAWLESS and JEFF ALESSANDRELLI

The way the godly Jupiter paints them,
                        each butterfly comes to life
                                   upon his brushing of the canvas,
                                                   inanimate specter becoming animate

Invisible

October 29, 2018 Issue 16, Issue 16 Poetry, Poetry

By SEBASTIAN MATTHEWS

He looked to be in his early 60s: compact build, a designer baseball cap tight on his head, beard close-cropped, clutching a smartphone in his right hand. It was eight in the morning, we were in line at Whole Foods, and the guy was wearing sunglasses.

On Confessionalism

October 29, 2018 Issue 16, Issue 16 Poetry, Poetry

By JOHN MURILLO

Not sleepwalking, but waking still,
with my hand on a gun, and the gun
in a mouth, and the mouth
on the face of a man on his knees.
Autumn of ’89, and I’m standing
in a section 8 apartment parking lot,
pistol cocked, and staring down
at this man, then up into the mug
of an old woman staring, watering
the single sad flower to the left
of her stoop, the flower also staring,

Bounty

October 29, 2018 Issue 16, Issue 16 Poetry, Podcasts & Audio, Poetry

By RICARDO ALBERTO MALDONADO

21 de septiembre de 2017: “pero estamos vivos”

One: home
Two: home dos tres dos tres two: Mother.

One lápiz. One pen. One ocean between us. Six: Home.

Native Shore / Orilla Natal

October 29, 2018 Issue 16, Issue 16 Poetry, Poetry, Translation

By MARA PASTOR
Translated by MARÍA JOSÉ GIMÉNEZ

This island is full of women
who come back the way
skeletons return with the surge
or turtles to their native shore.

They Won’t Find Us in Books

October 29, 2018 Issue 16, Issue 16 Poetry, Poetry

By WILLIE PERDOMO

And after we officially gained entry into the Brotherhood of Bad Motherfuckers, what could our mothers do but lose sleep, wake into prayer, prepare herbs & apples, cursive the names of our enemies on loose leaf, & let their names dust in the sunlight.

Now everything is clean, rezoned & paved, tenements abandoned like whack parties, what is left for us to do but summon bullies from their graves & liberate ourselves from influence.