Dispatch: Two Poems

By SHANLEY POOLE

a broken down, rusty car  faces out toward a lightly forested, sunny, and hilly landscape.

Photo courtesy of author.

Hot Springs, North Carolina

A Mathematical Formula for Continuing

I’m asking for a new geography,
something beyond the spiritual.

Tell me again, about that first
drive up Appalachian slopes

how you knew on sight these hills
could be home. I want

this effervescent temporary, here
with the bob-tailed cat

and a hundred hornet nests.
Will you tell me the sequence

of Fibonacci? The secret
of the nautilus? Answer:

After the departure of your bedbound
lover, you took to the spiral,

reached what was thought the end
and found yourself pirouetting.

I have just entered the dance,
crawled inside the shell, you promise

this is its own beginning.

 

a smiling person lying on their stomach on a beach. the photo has a sepia-toned filter

Photo credit: Rachel Balkema (IG @raba.co)

Lake Michigan

This Trail Leads to Lake Michigan

I’ve been reading to numb things, namely
the evidence that my childhood creek
is drying, that something inside me is splintering,
like that wedge of the dock that buried itself in my thumb
while we watched quagga mussels starve another body.
You asked if I still had thoughts about starving. Lake Superior
is the clearest of the Great Lakes, but its belly is hungry.
I dust the house for the third time this week and wonder
at the ecosystem of our apartment: the under watered plants,
the dog that’s always pacing. I meet a stranger on a walk
and learn his home has woodfired heat, that his dog howls
when his wife leaves, that after this he’ll head to church
to cut the turkey. Today is Thanksgiving. I do not ask directions,
I let my conversation ask for company. He points to the trail post.
This leads to Lake Michigan, he says. As if I hadn’t walked this path
since the age my feet could carry me. At home, I ask
M if he’d like a woodfire stove, if he’d like to run away,
build a home with me. Somewhere Great: Lake Superior,
Huron, Erie. How about here? He asks. Why wait to start building?

 

 

Shanley Poole is an MFA candidate at UNC-Greensboro. Their work is forthcoming or has been published in Analog, F(r)iction, 14 Poems, and Quarter(ly) Journal. She was a 2017 fellow at the Beargrass Writing Retreat, a 2024 writer-in-residence at Azule Residency, and former Storyteller at Ox-Bow School of Art & Artists’ Residency. 

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!

Dispatch: Two Poems

Related Posts

cover of paradiso

May 2025 Poetry Feature: Dante Alighieri, translated by Mary Jo Bang

DANTE ALIGHIERI
In order that the Bride of Him who cried out loudly / When He married her with His sacred blood / Might gladly go to her beloved / Feeling sure in herself and with more faith / In Him—He ordained two princes / To serve her, one on either side, as guides.

cover of the slip

Podcast: Lucas Schaefer on ”Tuesday“

LUCAS SCHAEFER
Lucas Schaefer speaks to managing editor Emily Everett about his story “Tuesday,” which appears in The Common’s brand new spring issue. “Tuesday” is an excerpt from his novel The Slip, out June 3 from Simon & Schuster; both center on a motley cast of characters at a boxing gym in Austin, Texas.

cover of the swan book

What We’re Reading: May 2025

TERESE SVOBODA
Curse and spell, Wright weaves ancient aboriginal beliefs, swooping and dipping like the swans, with fairytales and ominous “real life,” using time warps and fiercely beautiful language to register the vast environmental and social disaster that we as a people, among all others, are sure to endure.