At The Common we’re welcoming spring with new poetry by our contributors. (Be sure to listen to the audio link to Megan Fernandes’ “White People Always Want to Tell Me…,” read by the author.)
By ZACK STRAIT
There is a dark blue bible in the nightstand, a pitcher and torch
stamped on the cover in gold. I rub this symbol
with my thumb and I am comforted, knowing another
man was in this room before me, just to
place his light here.
Once in a car, a good boy
shook me hard. If you like it
that way in bed, then why are you…
the tiny bruises on my arms
where his prints pressed into my pink
sleeves rose to the surface like rattles.
By MARC VINCENZ
So—in they slot and plop in their perfectly
burnished 180-calorie-sandwiched-glory:
a delectable mélange well-clothed in filigrees
of dietary fibers, sodium, zero trans fat
and generously acidic to keep the heebie-jeebies
at bay
that they are not men,
that they have not settled into their beards and
remorse, their crow’s feet and givens.
There is not yet an investment in houses
settling onto their foundations, hair, or
yesterday. The boy senses his time is precarious,
Hall of Famer Frank Thomas, from 1990 to 2005,
hit 448 home runs over the fence for the White Sox
with the notorious Robert Taylor Homes standing just
beyond ballpark grounds across the Dan Ryan Expressway:
the high-rises, bruises against the city-flag-blue sky,
eyesores.
Was an emperor of element within the mountain’s hull,
chewing out the corridors of coal,
crafting my labyrinth as demanded.
My art: getting lost in the dark.
By U. S. DHUGA
No compunction, my physiotherapist
Exits, kale juice in hand, the Raw Chemist
With the swagger of a Neoptolemus
Who will lie to me, to you, to all of us
For the sake of winning what he mythifies
As our battle.
after Philip Larkin
I feared these present years,
the mid-thirties,
when my receding hairline
became backed up
like rush-hour traffic on the Gulf Freeway,
& my man-boobs swelled
into Tig Ol’ Bitties.
ca. 2008
On Marvin Gaye’s birthday, the D.J.
introduces “Sexual Healing” as the sole song
responsible for why some of his listeners exist.
If he & his wife were having trouble conceiving,
he would’ve skipped over the cliché
the way he skipped over the details
of Marvin’s tragic death, the way elders
can skip over real talk: like how, in their day,
producing classic records was as easy
as producing children.
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