First Apartment Near St. Mary’s T Stop

By BRETT FOSTER

I recollect at last those first few weeks
on Beacon Street: broke newlyweds, we hid
our finite riches in a little room,
a basement studio whose cost seemed gruesome.
Fresh from Corpus Christi, you learned to speak
a northern language, talk of “quarters” wide-
mouthed like a Chowdahead’s wicked idiom.

That strangeness resonates as echoed heirloom.
November then alive with many things,
we bundled up, explored the neighborhood.
The couple at the Busy Bee would bring
their frenzied fighting there, and Chinese food—
just half a block away! Some days we stood
at our door to mark the room’s great reckoning.

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!

First Apartment Near St. Mary’s T Stop

Related Posts

Fenway Park

Before They Traded Devers

AIDAN COOPER
I don’t know I’m not paying attention I’m crunching / peanut shells thinking Murakami began to write novels / because of baseball why don’t I / my dad’s grumpy / I’m vegetarian now & didn’t want a frank & yes it’s probably / a phase he’s probably right but it’s a good phase

Two sisters reading together in a green wheelbarrow

Sisterland

NANDINI BATTACHARYA
The descending Boeing 707’s engine can pretend to be the lullaby once in my mother’s veins singing my unborn heart to life if I close my eyes and pretend, but it misses. Instead, the stewardess’ practiced saga of arrival sings the dogged return of a stranger to a strange Ithaca—to Sisterland.

Dispatch: Two Poems

SHANLEY POOLE
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.