The Crew Change

By DON SHARE

 

Hobo, Bono, boneheap.
I mutilate dandelions in the sun,
rattle my rake like a saber

When Michelle-my-neighbor,
over compost, opines
that Aqualung’s a classic;

“At least I think so. U2?”
Does she mean: me, too?
In the foul rag and compost pile

Of my creaky abdomen I rustle
all the leaves of my locomotive breath
to agree because anything you say,

Michelle, must be so!  We live
in a time of need. Your hair always
looks brushed. Our conversations

Are abrupt. And yet…
The children grow and play over time
like centipedes behind our sofas;

The tools I never use seem
delightful on their pegs in the shed,
like the hopes I sharpened

Once beside the gleaming rails
as a schoolboy, a hiker, a little hobo never
far from someone’s back yard trampoline.

 

Don Share is Senior Editor of Poetry. His books include Squandermania (Salt Publishing), Union (Zoo Press), Seneca in English (Penguin Classics), and most recently a new book of poems, Wishbone (Black Sparrow) and Bunting’s Persia (Flood Editions, a 2012 Guardian Book of the Year.

Click here to purchase Issue 01

The Crew Change

Related Posts

cover of HEIRLOOM

March 2025 Poetry Feature: Catherine-Esther Cowie’s Heirloom

CATHERINE-ESTHER COWIE
Her eye-less eye. My long / longings brighten, like tinsel, the three-fingered / hand. Ashen lip. To exist in fragments. / To exist at all. A comfort. / A gutting. String her up then, / figurine on the cot mobile. / And I am the restless infant transfixed.

Dispatches from Mullai Nilam, Marutha Nilam, and Neithal Nilam

VIJAYALAKSHMI
There is fire everywhere, / both inside and outside. / Unaware of the intensity of the fire, / they maintain silence / like the serenity of a corpse. / From the burning fire / bursts out a waterfall tainted in red. / All over the shores have bloomed / the flaming lilies of motherhood.

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

Podcast: Gray Davidson Carroll on “Silent Spring”

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.