For My Parents

By ELIZABETH METZGER

 

Make the house leaves. Make the windows impenetrable. 
I will climb from underground with my dry bark heart
still pulsing for you

the old rhythm of dead humans once painted
just as freshly not breathing as my first day
outside paradise.

If I could thank you still
it would be for your obliviousness.
I got to keep the child you wanted.

What are needs when there are orange leaves exploding
from the roof. Here from the top of the earth
no fire would be built to make me forgiving. We would

never have to stand upright again. Four feet. Four hands. 
Bellies hanging with branches. 
Make the love that never had room for me

then stay alive 
the remote between you blinking.

Elizabeth Metzger is the author of The Spirit Papers, winner of the Juniper Prize for Poetry. Her second collection, Lying In, will be published in 2023 by Milkweed Editions. She is a poetry editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books.

[Purchase Issue 24 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!

For My Parents

Related Posts

Hitting a Wall and Making a Door: A Conversation between Phillis Levin and Diane Mehta

DIANE MEHTA and PHILLIS LEVIN
This conversation took place over the course of weeks—over daily phone calls and long emails, meals when they were in the same place, and a weekend in the Connecticut countryside. The poets share what they draw from each other’s work, and the work of others, exploring the pleasures of language, geometric movement, and formal constraint.

Anna Malihot and Olena Jenning's headshots

August 2025 Poetry Feature: Anna Malihon, translated by Olena Jennings

ANNA MALIHON
The girl with a bullet in her stomach / runs across the highway to the forest / runs without saying goodbye / through the news, the noble mold of lofty speeches / through history, geography, / curfew, a day, a century / She is so young that the wind carries / her over the long boulevard between bridges

Image of a tomato seedling

Talks with the Besieged: Documentary Poetry from Occupied Ukraine  

ALEX AVERBUCH
Russians are already in Starobilsk / what nonsense / Dmytrovka and Zhukivka – who is there? / half a hundred bears went past in the / direction of Oleksiivka / write more clearly / what’s the situation in Novoaidar? / the bridge by café Natalie got blown up / according to unconfirmed reports