I said nothing and thought
of the Foro Romano—
its basilicas, temples, arches—
imagined being by the Lapis Niger
confessing by the tomb of Romulus
and listening to Livia.
Rome, New York
after Austin Araujo
In my favorite picture of you, the hair blown across
your face, obscuring your face, it’s easy to make out,
deep in the distance, the hangers of the air force base
classified as a superfund site, a sprawling huddle
of buildings expanding out into the extent of the valley.
Was it all simply adornment,
watching the rain fall from the sun,
or the mourning dove that carried
the wallet-sized photo in its beak?
Looking back, it was true—
I had stopped seeing the beauty in it all,
living from moment to moment,
looking to be granted some small sense
of pleasure, as if by respite or charity.
Maryland, 2020
My partner wears the panopticon,
and I carry the rope. Hungry
for the rush, the chase, we locate
the missing black calf
about two-tenths of a mile
from East Silver Spring.
He’s wearing a long-sleeve
jersey T-shirt, navy blue jeans.
He’s three and a half feet tall,
and I can tell his age means
nothing to him. In his mind,
he treads with no care.
The report says he threw
a basketball, knocked over
a computer, and ran off
the school premises.
He looks at us, begins to wail.
My partner grabs him by the arm.
There is no crying! I taunt.
To lasso a calf, cowboys
must first use their weight
to hold the animal down
and then tie the legs together.
Does your mama spank you?
The boy shakes his head.
I tie the boy down with––
She’s gonna spank you today.
I’m gonna ask her to do it.
He wails even louder,
and screams, “No!”
He’s hyperventilating.
I command him to stop.
When the mother arrives,
I affirm point-blank,
We want you to beat him.
Beat him down to size,
the size he fits into a curb drain.
Beat him with your hands.
You can smack that butt, repeatedly.
My partner pulls out his handcuffs
to handcuff the boy,
the boy whose wrists are like
two thin stocks of red tulips.
My partner affirms,
These are for people
who don’t want to listen
and don’t know how to act.
The boy feels the cold steel of erasure,
of his name replaced by numbers.
The boy needs to learn,
or else…
We warned him.
Thea Matthews is a poet, author, and editor of African and Indigenous Mexican descent. Originally from San Francisco, California, she lives in Brooklyn, New York. Read more at TheaMatthews.com.
We are stretching towards each other,
words tangling. The words can’t always
be torn apart. Sometimes you
are ти. Sometimes we touch.
Jane loved her and often thought of her skin.
Its misleading surface area always moved her, how it wrapped around
and became infinite.
I saw a barn owl staring out from a telephone wire
driving down the road with the sky looking
like the edges of the newspaper we crumpled
into balls to light the woodstove
By MARIA JOSEP ESCRIVÀ
Translated by PETER BUSH
Who
Who has ever felt the shock of a brook
being sucked dry by the warm earth?
Who has ever felt the shock of the last
house falling apart in the mountains, mineral
corpse, stone by stone, bone by bone
of each man banished?
Winner of the DISQUIET Prize for Poetry
By IQRA KHAN
Watch the poet read from this piece at our Issue 28 launch party:
I begin as revelation. As explosion of glottal light against silence.
I am again asking for directions to the Haram, my ankles fluent in Arabic.
I am again asking for direction, ya Haram, my ankles flowing with Arabic!
Hagar, watch how God transforms this wilderness to civilization.
By ZACK STRAIT
There were other vehicles moving through the darkness behind us. But we didn’t notice. We forced our bodies into the brambles. We stood on our tiptoes, reached high above our heads like we were greedy for the stars that night. But we craved something attainable, we thought. We thought our need was for the wild summer blackberries. But we were foraging for another memory to sustain us through the evil days to come. And as we ate, the past ripened in clusters for us there among the thorns. I don’t know what my father thought about then, as we filled our bellies with those dark jewels, but I could almost taste my grandmother’s fruit cobbler. The blackberries, I remember, were perfect that night. They were plump and sweet. The juice didn’t stain our fingers or mouths. We ate and ate. How wonderful, how the earth offers such goodness to us without cost. And how awful.
Don’t miss an issue! Subscribe to The Common.