All posts tagged: gray Davidson carroll

September 2026 Poetry Feature

This month, we’re pleased to bring you poems by BRIONNE JANAE, GRAY DAVIDSON CARROLL, and WILBERT TURNER III.

Table of Contents

  • Brionne Janae, “You Got to Walk That Lonesome Valley”
  • Gray Davidson Carroll, “Aubade, or Ars Poetica as Men”
  • Wilbert Turner III, “Desperado Despair”

 

Author photos of Brionne Janae, Gray Davidson Carroll, and Wilbert Turner III

From left to right: Brionne Janae, Gray Davidson Carroll, and Wilbert Turner III.

 

YOU GOT TO WALK THAT LONESOME VALLEY
By Brionne Janae
                        ~ after Mississippi John Hurt

            and how did you go through it?
            and did you keep? did you keep your mind?

you got to walk it for yourself

            and on returning what state did you find it in?
            as in what state were you in?
            were you where you left yourself?
            and who was left?
            was anyone left?
            and how sure were you that you could reach them?

September 2026 Poetry Feature
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Anti-Aubade

By GRAY DAVIDSON CARROLL

November 6th, 2024

I wake in the night, check the news. Watch you
turn in your sleep, rest your cheek on my chest.
How everything and also this: the heat of your skin,
hand wrapping my waist, the off-beat of our breaths
finding rhythm in the dark.

In the kitchen, I cry to the sound of my mother’s sobs.
Count the injections I have left before the vials run out.
There is no point in asking how, in asking why. Empire
does not answer questions. Genocide does not answer
questions—the answers were right there.

At the train station, the man next to me cries, 
turns his face to meet my own. Somehow, the sun
is shining. A dog barks. Someone laughs. Everything
fragments. A mother & daughter step up to the tracks,
squeeze each other’s hands.

 

[Purchase Issue 30 here.]

 

Gray Davidson Carroll is a white, nonbinary writer, dancer, singer, cold water plunger, and (self-proclaimed) hot chocolate alchemist hailing from Brooklyn by way of Western Massachusetts and other strange and forgotten places.

Anti-Aubade
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Podcast: Gray Davidson Carroll on “Silent Spring”

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Listen on Spotify.

Transcript: 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. Gray also discusses how they started writing poetry, how they approach drafting and revision, and how their work in public health fits with and complements their work in poetry. We also hear a reading of Gray’s first poem in The Common, “November 19, 2022,” about the Club Q nightclub shooting in Colorado Springs.

Gray Davidson Carroll's headshot next to the cover of The Common Issue 28.

Podcast: Gray Davidson Carroll on “Silent Spring”
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March 2024 Poetry Feature: New Poems by Our Contributors

New poems by our contributors DAVID LEHMAN, MATT DONOVAN, JULIA KOLCHINSKY DASBACH, and GRAY DAVIDSON CARROLL

 

Table of Contents:

  • David Lehman, “Honor Code” and “Rhode Island is Famous for You (for Denise Duhamel)” 
  • Matt Donovan, “Looking at the Statue of Athena in Nashville’s Replica of the Parthenon, Waiting for Something to Happen”
  • Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach, “What does the vulture say to the snowman(?) or how my son is learning to tell jokes(.)”
  • Gray Davidson Carroll, “November 19, 2022,”
March 2024 Poetry Feature: New Poems by Our Contributors
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