Matryoshka in Odessa

By DIANE THIEL 

When I started out, it was mostly about the adventure, 
following Ivan and the firebird, heading into history
across the Black Sea, climbing the Odessa steps
through the resistance, then the suppression
which fed yet another resistance, following 
Pushkin through the tangle of fairy tales 

and into the catacombs, thinking I knew 
something about where I was headed,
the mind that kind of puzzle box.
Inside any story is always a new 
layer waiting to be uncovered.

Once we open it, we find another inside.
As a child, I called them nesting dolls.
Sometimes they could all disappear 
one into another, like secrets, 

but they could also be opened, one 
by one, until I would get to
the story at the center, 

a seed so small it was 
easy to lose, the one 

that started it all.

 

Diane Thiel’twelfth book, Questions from Outer Space, appeared from Red Hen Press in 2022. Her work is anthologized widely, most recently in Best American Poetry 2023. A Regents’ Professor at UNM, she has received PEN, NEA, and Fulbright Awards. She has traveled the world with her young family. Visit DianeThiel.net.

[Purchase Issue 25 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!

Matryoshka in Odessa

Related Posts

Contrail across blue sky

July 2025 Poetry Feature: New Poems by our Contributors

GEOFFREY BROCK
Sing, O furrow-browed youth, / of the contrails scoring the sky, / bright as lines of cocaine / until, as they age, the eye // loses them to the blue… / Sing of the thin-skinned plane / that made those ephemeral clouds, / and of all that each contains: // the countless faceless strangers

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

Cover of All Is The Telling by Rosa Castellano

An Embodied Sense of Time: Raychelle Heath Interviews Rosa Castellano

ROSA CASTELLANO
I’m holding a blank page all the time for myself. That’s a truth that I choose to believe in: the blank page is a tool for our collective liberation. It can be how we keep going. I love that we can find each other on the page and heal each other, too. So, I invoke that again and again, for myself, because I need it.