On Being Thirty-Six

By JONATHAN MOODY 

after Philip Larkin

 

I feared these present years,

the mid-thirties,

when my receding hairline

became backed up

like rush-hour traffic on the Gulf Freeway,

& my man-boobs swelled

 

into Tig Ol’ Bitties. I wonder:

can Dr. Neil

deGrasse Tyson explain

the phenomenon of how

scrotum sacs start succumbing to gravity?

Each time I bend down,

 

it sounds like there are branches

breaking inside

of my knees—

a burden I wish

stemmed from long hours of shooting hoops

& stealing the rock

 

from flashy point guards

more in love

with the sound of their

own dribble than the sound

of their coach sliding “W’s” in the Win column.

I’m four years

 

shy of having a doctor

cram a microscope

in my chili con queso

to detect if any cauliflower-

shaped polyps have sprouted in my colon.

How real this shit be;

 

ritual, you’re tacky:

a neon sherbet orange

 

sweater handed down,

illuminating the fact

that I’m slowly turning towards decay.

I just want to live life

 

unencumbered by lower

back pain,

by overzealous

students insisting

my soothing bass will give Morgan Freeman’s baritone

a run for its money

 

when it comes

to narrating

the lives of geoducks,

tortoises, & tuataras:

animals that will outlive great-grandparents

 

but never the legacy

behind amazing

architecture shaped

like a lotus flower.

The body isn’t a temple; it’s built

to wither.

 

I choose to shrivel

up with grace

in autumn, falling

in slow motion

with brass leaves extending the muted sound

of a jazzy zephyr.

 

Jonathan Moody is the author of The Doomy Poems and Olympic Butter Gold, which won the Cave Canem Northwestern University Press Poetry Prize. 

On Being Thirty-Six

Related Posts

cover of HEIRLOOM

March 2025 Poetry Feature: Catherine-Esther Cowie’s Heirloom

CATHERINE-ESTHER COWIE
Her eye-less eye. My long / longings brighten, like tinsel, the three-fingered / hand. Ashen lip. To exist in fragments. / To exist at all. A comfort. / A gutting. String her up then, / figurine on the cot mobile. / And I am the restless infant transfixed.

Dispatches from Mullai Nilam, Marutha Nilam, and Neithal Nilam

VIJAYALAKSHMI
There is fire everywhere, / both inside and outside. / Unaware of the intensity of the fire, / they maintain silence / like the serenity of a corpse. / From the burning fire / bursts out a waterfall tainted in red. / All over the shores have bloomed / the flaming lilies of motherhood.

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.