By DOROTHY CHAN
Oh, how I crave Bloody Marys at night, tomato and vodka,
kick of Tabasco, spices make everything in life a hell
of a lot better, or at least a hell of a lot more interesting,
and I think that’s what we’re aiming for, and maybe what
I really want is tomato soup, like Andy Warhol used to request
All posts tagged: Poetry
Red Light Roses
Josey picks me up at work in a car we bought
together, car she dug out of frozen slush for hours.
She picks me up and gives me roses. Valentine’s Day.
October 2018 Poetry Feature
This month The Common offers a selection of poems from the anthology Making Mirrors: Writing/Righting by and for Refugees, forthcoming in November from Olive Branch Press, an imprint of Interlink Publishing Group.
A POETRY ANTHOLOGY THAT ILLUMINATES EXILE AND DISPLACEMENT
Making Mirrors began on two continents, envisioned by Palestinian poet and aid worker, Jehan Bseiso, and Becky Thompson, a US-based poet changed by months of greeting refugees after their perilous journey across the Aegean Sea.
This anthology uses mirrors to reflect imagistic connections that allow us to see ourselves in each other, those on rafts and those standing on the shore, those waiting/writing in detention and those writing from places of relative safety, those who lift their children to the sky and those whose bodies are at the bottom of the sea.
Samuel Miranda: Poetry and Art
LOOKING FOR MY CITIZENSHIP
After Adál
When I am unsure of who I am
I pick up my dominos
and search out el reverendo
Pedro Pietri
so we can pray for clarity.
Breaking Night
In that year of a shot to the head where were you the first time you broke night?
When you break night, you learn that one puff, under the right circumstance, can give you the right perspective.
You learn to pick up stories that fall & slip on the right side of knowing.
September 2018 Poetry Feature: CP Surendran
Poems from Available Light: New and Selected Poems
By CP SURENDRAN
In advance of the U.S. publication of AVAILABLE LIGHT: New and Selected Poems (forthcoming from MadHat Press), we welcome CP Surendran to The Common.
The Little River
By SUSAN HARLAN
Great Smoky Mountains National Park
The Little River isn’t very little or rather
I don’t know what it is little in relationship to.
By the bank the water is smooth as paper
but in the middle my sneakered feet are unsteady
pulled by the current.
Four Poems from New York City
By SEAN SINGER
New York City, NY
Floating
Today in the taxi I brought the famous jazz drummer’s wife, Elena, all around Harlem doing errands. Cobb is the last surviving member of the band that recorded Kind of Blue. We went to the bank and to the pharmacy. She let loose with some stories. It was as if his music was not alone waking up from its dream.
August 2018 Poetry Feature: New Poems by Loren Goodman
This month we welcome back contributor LOREN GOODMAN, the author of Famous Americans, selected by W. S. Merwin for the 2002 Yale Series of Younger Poets, Suppository Writing, and New Products. He is an associate professor of creative writing and English literature at Yonsei University / Underwood International College in Seoul, South Korea, and serves as the UIC Creative Writing Director.
RAPTURE
The Rabbi’s little son
Decked out in stripes
One leather strap
Over the edge
Of the black
Lacquer box wraps
July 2018 Poetry Feature
New poems by our contributors, ERICA EHRENBERG and SEBASTIAN MATTHEWS
The Toy Lamb
It was the limpness that I loved,
the way it dangled
even when it was sitting,
when it was as low down
as it possibly could be against the line
of gravity,