ca. 2008
On Marvin Gaye’s birthday, the D.J.
introduces “Sexual Healing” as the sole song
responsible for why some of his listeners exist.
If he & his wife were having trouble conceiving,
he would’ve skipped over the cliché
the way he skipped over the details
of Marvin’s tragic death, the way elders
can skip over real talk: like how, in their day,
producing classic records was as easy
as producing children.
I found the Cyclops and his Galatea
in their shop on Piano Provenanza.
They’d been domestic for a while.
I’d gone for his wildflowers and Ragabo pines.
I’d gone for the wintry July breezes that
dilute the sulfur of his neighborhood.
I’d gone to see the roughened lava of
his searching, the obsidian of his instant grief.
By HONOR MOORE
To bind at last
the loose miscellany
a first love left
and shattered.
That summer
in Florence alone
she stepped
into the Bargello,
room of Donatello, of saints
given shape.
County Meath, Ireland, ca. 3200 BC
At Newgrange, they carved spirals into the stone
over and over, though surely a curved line is the most difficult
and time-consuming thing to carve into stone, carving
with another stone, into the long, dark nights that went on for ages,
I thought you were dead.
On your Facebook wall,
well-wishes and then nothing.
The mitosis of what if:
worries twirl and spiral
and settle into clock-cogs
which lock and jam.
Books burning 3:39 a.m.
Chapter 6, Don Quixote.
Touch-me-nots
Wilting-in-progress.
In your obituary I concluded, “Muriel lives on in…”
and went on to name myself, my two brothers,
and your eleven grandchildren. I may have been thinking
of Pasternak who said something like our life
in others is our immortality, or I may have just been
looking for a way to make your life continue
even as I announced that it was already finished.
Translated by ILAN STAVANS
Abrazable
A Piedad Bonnett
Irremplazable tú,
voz tú vacía
de mi vacío en ti
inconsolable.
Mi tú irremediable
tu mí espejo
de tu reflejo
Please welcome back TC contributors Elizabeth Hazen, Jonathan Moody, Daniel Tobin, and Honor Moore (whose poem “Song,” published in the first issue of The Common, was reprinted in Best American Poetry 2012). We’re also delighted to welcome Gerard Coletta, who is making his first appearance in The Common.
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Celebrating 15 Years