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In Montgomery County

October 21, 2024 Audio, Issue 28, Issue 28 Poetry, Poetry, Poetry Recordings

The Common Magazine · “In Montgomery County” by Thea Matthews

Maryland, 2020

My partner wears the panopticon,
and I carry the rope. Hungry
for the rush, the chase, we locate
the missing black calf
about two-tenths of a mile
from East Silver Spring.
He’s wearing a long-sleeve
jersey T-shirt, navy blue jeans.
He’s three and a half feet tall,
and I can tell his age means
nothing to him. In his mind,
he treads with no care.
The report says he threw
a basketball, knocked over
a computer, and ran off
the school premises.
He looks at us, begins to wail.
My partner grabs him by the arm.
There is no crying! I taunt.
To lasso a calf, cowboys
must first use their weight
to hold the animal down
and then tie the legs together.
Does your mama spank you?
The boy shakes his head.
I tie the boy down with––
She’s gonna spank you today.
I’m gonna ask her to do it.
He wails even louder,
and screams, “No!”
He’s hyperventilating.
I command him to stop.
When the mother arrives,
I affirm point-blank,
We want you to beat him.
Beat him down to size,
the size he fits into a curb drain.
Beat him with your hands.
You can smack that butt, repeatedly.
My partner pulls out his handcuffs
to handcuff the boy,
the boy whose wrists are like
two thin stocks of red tulips.
My partner affirms,
These are for people
who don’t want to listen
and don’t know how to act.
The boy feels the cold steel of erasure,
of his name replaced by numbers.
The boy needs to learn,
or else…
We warned him.

Thea Matthews is a poet, author, and editor of African and Indigenous Mexican descent. Originally from San Francisco, California, she lives in Brooklyn, New York. Read more at TheaMatthews.com.

[Purchase Issue 28 here.]

Collaboration 

October 21, 2024 Issue 28, Issue 28 Poetry, Poetry

By OLENA JENNINGS

We are stretching towards each other,
words tangling. The words can’t always 
be torn apart. Sometimes you 
are ти. Sometimes we touch.

Diorama 1871 (say her name four times)

October 21, 2024 Issue 28, Issue 28 Poetry, Poetry

By CATIE ROSEMURGY

Jane loved her and often thought of her skin. 
Its misleading surface area always moved her, how it wrapped around 
and became infinite. 

Silent Spring

October 21, 2024 Issue 28, Issue 28 Poetry, Poetry

By GRAY DAVIDSON CARROLL

I saw a barn owl staring out from a telephone wire
driving down the road with the sky looking
like the edges of the newspaper we crumpled
into balls to light the woodstove

Maria Josep Escrivà: Poems

October 21, 2024 Catalan Portfolio, Issue 28, Issue 28 Poetry, Poetry, Translation

By MARIA JOSEP ESCRIVÀ
Translated by PETER BUSH

Who

Who has ever felt the shock of a brook
being sucked dry by the warm earth?

Who has ever felt the shock of the last
house falling apart in the mountains, mineral
corpse, stone by stone, bone by bone
of each man banished?

Iqra

October 21, 2024 Issue 28, Issue 28 Poetry, Poetry

Winner of the DISQUIET Prize for Poetry

By IQRA KHAN

Watch the poet read from this piece at our Issue 28 launch party:

I begin as revelation. As explosion of glottal light against silence.
I am again asking for directions to the Haram, my ankles fluent in Arabic.

I am again asking for direction, ya Haram, my ankles flowing with Arabic!
Hagar, watch how God transforms this wilderness to civilization.

Roadside Blackberries

October 21, 2024 Issue 28, Issue 28 Poetry, Poetry

By ZACK STRAIT

There were other vehicles moving through the darkness behind us. But we didn’t notice. We forced our bodies into the brambles. We stood on our tiptoes, reached high above our heads like we were greedy for the stars that night. But we craved something attainable, we thought. We thought our need was for the wild summer blackberries. But we were foraging for another memory to sustain us through the evil days to come. And as we ate, the past ripened in clusters for us there among the thorns. I don’t know what my father thought about then, as we filled our bellies with those dark jewels, but I could almost taste my grandmother’s fruit cobbler. The blackberries, I remember, were perfect that night. They were plump and sweet. The juice didn’t stain our fingers or mouths. We ate and ate. How wonderful, how the earth offers such goodness to us without cost. And how awful.

The Presence of Absence

October 21, 2024 Issue 28, Issue 28 Poetry, Poetry

By BOB HICOK

Caroline resembled moonlight.

She never appeared when it rained,
made the grass and broken windows
more beautiful, and had me wondering
if our love was waxing or waning.

Kakosmos

October 21, 2024 Issue 28, Issue 28 Poetry, Poetry

By JILL PEARLMAN

Human systems exist in the mystery
always at the point of spilling
over green, over and over their present containers
of cities and grids and human perception

for what of entanglements, what of catastrophes
what of black holes, of soot from burnt timber
what of seashells, snails, urchins in the pavement
of ancient Greek settlements

Cherry Pie / Postpartum Depression

October 21, 2024 Issue 28, Issue 28 Poetry, Poetry

By FARAH PETERSON

Still bleeding from birth
I looked up from you, daughter
your grandma was
shouting at me
in our hospital room
and I thought, enough
of this childhood pain
(an emancipation never
complete in my heart)
the next weeks your little fist
dimpling my breast was a
mere aesthetic
as she had not blessed me
I could not let her go

For the cherries from
Saturday’s market I used
a sharp coffee spoon
each bright heart-organ
hoards the clit of the fruit
I stabbed and extracted
hurting my thumb
sometimes I couldn’t get
all the meat off
you fetched a stool
each fruit, gravely chosen
now came lifted and pillowed
on your soft palm
then you drank all the juice
in the discard bowl

it ran down your chin
and onto the floor
I drained all the juices
from under the flesh and
you guzzled that too

Such gusto my dear
with each breath I bless you
go go go

Farah Peterson‘s work has appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, The Atlantic, The Best American Magazine Writing, The Florida Review, Ploughshares, and The Threepenny Review, and is forthcoming in the 2025 Pushcart Prize anthology. She is a law professor at the University of Chicago.

[Purchase Issue 28 here.]