Civil Service

By COLIN CHANNER
A man-boy of nearly twenty,
slave-dressing in pantaloons
in 1930, slowly reads a Gleaner
from behind a stocky “German”
woman in a fabric shop.
Finds himself in love.
Walking home, feet adding shine-ness
to a track cut out of scrub,
he hugs the parcel of organdy
that his mother took on trust,
sounds each word the way he did
at first reading, lips moving,
voice too shy to read inside
his head alone.
Above,
birds form an arrow.
Around,
insects hustle-bustle,
get on with the gnawing,
digging, scraping, the noise-making
of their work.
Ahead,
green mountains gallop
left to right, unbroken herd.
Civil service, says
our young romantic
over and over again.
Maybe where you go
to be a civilize
and not no cunumunu,
as Miss Lady styled him
when she dressed him down
for reading out her paper,
eye-raping her neck-back.
But it’s an error that I live off,
this man-boy’s misread,
a blunder he compounded
as he clambered into
walks of guavas, figs
and pomegranates,
fruits with no owner,
taking steeper slopes
toward the ridge his kin
had come to after
getting their free paper,
dug their yam hills,
planted roots.
A better reader
would have gotten
hired by the Royal Mail.
But which colonial system
could afford to waste a fellow
like grandad:
obedient, simple-minded,
burly, color struck.
They couldn’t trust him
with an envelope. They
issued him a gun.

 

Colin Channer’s many books of prose include the novella The Girl with the Golden Shoes and the novel Waiting in Vain. His first poetry collection,  Providential, is out this fall; his work was the subject of The Common’s online June poetry feature. 

[Purchase your copy of Issue 10 here.]

From the beginning, The Common has brought you transportive writing and exciting new voices. We are committed to supporting writers and maintaining free, unrestricted access to our website, but we can’t do it without you. Become an integral part of our global community of readers and writers by donating today. No amount is too small. Thank you!

Civil Service

Related Posts

Year of the Murder Hornet, by Tina Cane

October 2025 Poetry Feature: From DEAR DIANE: LETTERS FOR A REVOLUTIONARY

TINA CANE
I take that back Diane surely you conceived / of it all before any of it came to pass / mother daughter sister of the revolution / you had a knack for choosing the ground / for a potential battle you didn’t want to stumble / bloody out of Central Park to try to find help / there where the money is

beach

“During the Drought,” “Sestina, Mount Mitchill,” “Dragonflies”

LIZA KATZ DUNCAN
”The earth, as blue and green / as a child’s drawing of the earth— // is this what disaster looks like? My love, think / of the dragonflies, each migratory trip / spanning generations. Imagine // that kind of faith: to leave a place behind / knowing a part of you will find its way back, / instinct outweighing desire.

whale sculpture on white background

September 2025 Poetry Feature: Earth Water Fire Poems, a Conversation

LISA ASAGI
"We and the whales, / and everyone else, / sleep and wake in bodies / that have a bit of everything / that has ever lived. Forests, oceans, / horse shoe crabs, horses, / orange trees in countless of glasses of juice, / lichen that once grew / on the cliffsides of our ancestors, / deepseated rhizomes, and stars.