2022 | Page 5 | The Common

The Lesson

October 31, 2022 Issue 24, Issue 24 Poetry, Poetry

Or else swoon to death, the young poet wrote,
    though these in the seminar’s steadfast room
appear to want little or none of it,
    however coddlingly the professor prods.
They are the poet’s age at death, or almost,
    but do not find “relatable” these words
composed by one who knew his passion hopeless—
    especially the sleepless Eremite,
belonging to another world and time,
    and even his fair love’s ripening breast
conjures only suspect looks, withering stares,
    or now and then a tolerating nod.
Of course, they must assume their own bright stars
will rise aloft some digital empyrean

Our Night Hangs By A Thread

October 31, 2022 Issue 24, Issue 24 Poetry, Issues, Poetry

By AKWE AMOSU

April’s cool Catskill forests are yet to leaf out
but the maple’s crimson flowers blush whole hillsides
deepening the dense green in the fields below.

Loneliness

October 31, 2022 Issue 24, Issue 24 Poetry, Poetry

By JOHN FREEMAN

Sundays I’d walk down the hill toward the green four o’clock
   dark beginning like a rumor—
always she was leaning over the counter, head tipped toward
   a tiny phone,
her husband turning the pages of a
Daily Mail like a man
    whose suspicions of human nature were
    being fed fresh evidence.
Stale fryer fat, ale, black and tans in the fridge.
They knew I’d be there before the match started.
You alright yeah
Every Sunday a matinee I attended for three years
as volcanoes exploded
and she died,
white slipped into my beard
wars began and others ended.
Each Sunday the words gathering new weight
strangeness
as words do when you repeat them.
You alright
I didn’t know but by halftime if I wasn’t too pissed
I’d walk home in the furred darkness before the beer wore off
and a sudden gust of wind could blow cold air on my heart.

“Can’t you see I’m a fool”

October 31, 2022 Issue 24, Issue 24 Poetry, Issues, Podcasts & Audio, Poetry, Poetry Recordings

By LAUREN HILGER

The Common Magazine · “Can’t you see I’m a fool” by Lauren Hilger

I was once in a denim skirt and cowboy hat, spilling milk in a grocery store.
How many songs did I learn to sing I was the fool?
I am a fool. I know I have been a fool—
these are the early future concepts out of which I turned into myself.

Terror

October 31, 2022 Issue 24, Issue 24 Poetry, Poetry

By TOMMYE BLOUNT

“Made of cotton Jeans, red cotton cord
and one cotton tassel. Price, each $5.00″

—from Catalogue of Official Robes and Banners, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan

Inside the discourse, our course—the walk
in the tattle, the footwork goose stepped

Nine Twelve Poem

October 31, 2022 Issue 24, Issue 24 Poetry, Poetry

By ANACAONA ROCIO MILAGRO

Dedicated to Reina Yolanda Burdie

I was in Egypt nine months before the towers fell.
The people spoke to me in Arabic Roh Rohi
but I spoke back in English so they called me “American”
/I never called myself American.
America never called me American – not without a hyphen.

Geist

October 31, 2022 Fiction, Issue 24, Issue 24 Fiction, Poetry Recordings

By KATHLEEN HEIL

The Common Magazine · “Geist” by Kathleen Heil

At an artists’ collective near the Polish border about an hour from Berlin, I’d been taking a break from translating texts into English, a task I once enjoyed but was beginning to resent, as I was beginning to feel invisible—or was it burnt out?—in any case, I was glad to get away for a few days: it was my first vacation since I-don’t-know-when, and I’d begun to feel my soul was spent. Over lunch on my last day there, a woman from Seoul who went by the nickname Hae—a transliteration of the word “sun” in Korean, she said—asked what the word in German was for “soul.” Actually, the woman sitting next to her asked, but the woman sitting next to Hae came from Spain and was shy about her English, so when she directed the question at me I heard the word as “sol”—we’d spent the week speaking both Spanish and English—and said, in reply, “Sonne.”

Suppose You Were a Bad Ghost

October 31, 2022 Issue 24, Issue 24 Poetry, Issues, Poetry

By MARCI CALABRETTA CANCIO-BELLO

You tried so hard to be good, turning
the shower on when no one was home,
brushing your teeth so inaudibly
that even standing in the hall with an ear
pressed to wood, no one could hear you.
The sun could not freckle through you,
but each morning you pressed your palms
against the wallpaper as if you might
one day slip right through into daylight.
Once, you went so long without laughing
you forgot how to start altogether.
You watched one scary movie per year
to insist you knew how to be brave,
because you knew you weren’t
transparent enough to pass through
when those hands came spoiling at night.

For My Parents

October 31, 2022 Issue 24, Issue 24 Poetry, Poetry, Poetry Recordings

By ELIZABETH METZGER

The Common Magazine · “For My Parents” by Elizabeth Metzger

Make the house leaves. Make the windows impenetrable.
I will climb from underground with my dry bark heart
still pulsing for you

In Heat

October 31, 2022 Fiction, Issue 24, Issue 24 Fiction, Translation

By GABRIEL CARLE

Translated from the Spanish by HEATHER HOUDE

It’s the last day of school, and I get home with butterflies in my stomach. My mouth already tastes like summer, like heat outside and air conditioning inside, like the darkness of my cave, like cloister and crypt. I turn on the television and change the channel, change the channel, one to the next, discovering the lineup for the beginning of the end of the week, the beginning of my three-month rest, the beginning of a new wave of televised hunger, the same that ensues from another year of school.

All posts tagged: 2022

The Lesson

Our Night Hangs By A Thread

Loneliness

“Can’t you see I’m a fool”

Terror

Nine Twelve Poem

Geist

Suppose You Were a Bad Ghost

For My Parents

In Heat

Discover the extraordinary in The Common.