All posts tagged: Poetry

October 2018 Poetry Feature

Making Mirrors

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.

October 2018 Poetry Feature
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Breaking Night

By WILLIE PERDOMO


 

"De Puerto Rico: Un Ano Despues de la Tormenta"

 

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.

Breaking Night
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The Little River

By SUSAN HARLAN

the great smoky mountains national park

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.

The Little River
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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.

Four Poems from New York City
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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

August 2018 Poetry Feature: New Poems by Loren Goodman
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