Dominus

By ANGIE MACRI

Danger, as in strangers, men or women;
as in twisters at night when you couldn’t
see them coming; as in the machines
that made work so easy you forgot
to watch what you were doing, bushhogs,
saws, grinders; as in any kind of fire,
ovens that used to catch women’s skirts,
boilers in every school and church;
as in falling, from lofts, trees, our fathers’
good graces; as in our human nature,
sinful with denim; as in the undertow
of the river; as in trains unable to stop
due to their length and mass, their hurry;
as in the lord, who has dominion
with his power to harm. He has no other.

 

Angie Macri is the author of Sunset Cue, winner of the Lauria/Frasca Poetry Prize, and Underwater Panther, winner of the Cowles Poetry Book Prize. An Arkansas Arts Council fellow, she lives in Hot Springs.

[Purchase Issue 28 here.]

Dominus

Related Posts

Gray Davidson Carroll's headshot next to the cover of The Common Issue 28.

Podcast: Gray Davidson Carroll on “Silent Spring”

GRAY DAVIDSON CARROLL
Poet Gray Davidson Carroll speaks to managing editor Emily Everett about their poem “Silent Spring,” which appears in The Common’s fall issue. Gray talks about poetry as a way to witness and observe the world and how we experience it, and how it’s changing.

February 2025 Poetry Feature: New Poems by Our Contributors

MARC VINCENZ
Oh, you genius, you beehive, / you spark, you contiguous line— / all from the same place of origin // where there is no breeze. // All those questions posed … / take no notice, the image / is stamped on your brow, even // as you glare in the mirror, // as the others are orbiting

Excerpt from The Math of Saint Felix

DIANE EXAVIER
I turn thirty-two / the sky is mostly cloudy / over my apartment / facing Nostrand // and all my parents are dead // I am rolling my hips / toward death in a dying / city on a planet dying / just a touch slower than me // and one sister jokes we only need thirty more years