Parasitical

By DANIEL TOBIN
Despite having no lungs and unable to breathe, the second
head displays signs of independent consciousness…. 


The first fiction is
I’m talking to you at all,
the more amorphous
of my own Janus head, the god
alive and compassing
what has gone and what
is coming, though
which is which is
hard to say. Did I say
my own? I meant ours, my
sister twin, the comelier
countenance of our mirror
linkage, orbital, locked,
each turned away one
from the other, turned
outward each to our
own horizon, inverted
reflections on the knife-
edge of a pane. Don’t be
distracted by my lack
of a body, the froth
at my mouth, my eyes
circling in their sockets
like wobbling stars, I, too,
keep counsel in our shared
skull, the woven vessels
of our thoughts, the mutual
current of our separateness.
Her limbs, her length, are mine,
wayward from me outwardly,
and if you call me the one
who follows, dependent,
the monster in the blood,
think of your own, the seamless
bonds inside your boundaries
hidden familiarly; think
how each breath lives
off another’s, so that in
another world, another time
we two together, one, would be
divinity in human form,
holiest, a double sun, the crown
of the temple’s plenum, and I
something more than a mask
you cut free for love
of the other, who of course
will die without me; the visage
in the bottom of the tray
you’ll bury to salve yourselves—
the scar, the scald, the waste,
the link, the lack: your secret face.

 

Daniel Tobin is the author of seven books of poems, Where the World is Made, Double Life, The Narrows, Second Things, Belated Heavens (winner of the Massachusetts Book Award in Poetry, 2011), The Net (forthcoming, Four Way Books, 2014), and From Nothing (forthcoming, Four Way Books, 2016), along with the critical studies and Passage to the Center: Imagination and the Sacred in the Poetry of Seamus Heaney and Awake in America.  He is the editor of The Book of Irish American Poetry from the Eighteenth Century to the Present, The Selected Poems and Lola Ridge, and Poet’s Work, Poet’s Play: Essays on the Practice and the Art.  His awards include the “The Discovery/The Nation Award,” The Robert Penn Warren Award, the Robert Frost Fellowship, the Katherine Bakeless Nason Prize, and creative writing fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation.

[Purchase your copy of Issue 02 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!

Parasitical

Related Posts

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

A Tour of America

MORIEL ROTHMAN-ZECHER
This afternoon I am well, thank you. / Walking down Main Street in Danville, KY. / The heavy wind so sensuous. / Last night I fell- / ated four different men back in / Philadelphia season lush and slippery / with time and leaves. / Keep your eyes to yourself, yid. / As a kid, I pledged only to engage / in onanism on special holidays.

cover for "True Mistakes" by Lena Moses-Schmitt

Giving the Poem a Body: Megan Pinto interviews Lena Moses-Schmitt

LENA MOSES-SCHMITT
I think sometimes movement can be used to show how thought is made manifest outside the body. And also just more generally: when you leave the house, when you are walking, your thoughts change because your environment changes, and your body is changing. Moving is a way of your consciousness interacting with the world.