2012 | Page 8 | The Common

Thank You Lee Smolin, Thank you Mr. Leibniz

October 1, 2012 Issue 04, Issue 04 Poetry, Poetry

So we’re monads after all,  that’s a relief, complete and separate
and also connected to every other agglomeration of fundamental particles
(aka pine cone, parking meter, vodka orange)
we’ve ever touched however tangentially,
boson from a breath of Plato’s used air
gone two millennia later into the feather of a chicken in Mumbai,
air I exhale full of fermions from the fourth king of Axum’s coronation dinner,
so that if you read any electron’s palm now you can tell
what it will be feeling in 4005.

“Photographing the Building is Forbidden Until the War is Over”

October 1, 2012 Issue 04, Issue 04 Poetry, Poetry

By KAREN PRESS

1
A relief supply ship for the bombed citizens of Iraq
called Sir Galahad
arrives tomorrow in the port of Basra.

Oh where is the beautiful lady
who will come out of the charred crowd
to lay her long hair along the shore
and wave the green scarf of welcome?

Fernão the Gardener Has Premonitions

October 1, 2012 Issue 04, Issue 04 Poetry, Poetry

By YVETTE CHRISTIANSË

There is a stain on the horizon.
It leaks into the world, covers
the linens, covers the faces
and turns this ocean, shuddering,
from its course.

The Secret Lives of Maps

October 1, 2012 Issue 04, Issue 04 Poetry, Poetry

By YVETTE CHRISTIANSË

On occasion, the animals
curl into themselves, their skins,
and we—not knowing why—
put our faces to the wind
and sniff.

A Message Comes In

October 1, 2012 Issue 04, Issue 04 Poetry, Poetry

By YVETTE CHRISTIANSË

from Imprendehora

Do not say “I hear the laughter of birds
above our heads.” Say, it is the laughter
of women who empty their washbasins
on the steps of very high houses
whose walls, they say,
can never be cleaned.

Allahabad

October 1, 2012 Issue 04, Issue 04 Poetry, Poetry

By ARI SITAS

from Around the World in Eighty Days: The India Section

It was important to have a conversation with
Pandit Nehru in Allahabad
After the visitors left the fine house
We sat down for tea
Overlooking the confluence of the sacred rivers
I marveled at the variety of trees