The Narrows

By CHRISTOPHER DEWEESE

 

The water oh the sounds
trapped between two bodies
when the gulls break down
into the waves
and I’m on one shore and you are away.
I raise my spyglass
sort of like a cheer,
drink you in my good eye
until darkness comes,
a backpack full of liquor.
Driftwood forts turn the years
inward like harmonicas
until we become the babies
policemen chase away,
their heavy beams
probing for monologues
across the sudden water.
It’s been a long time
since Divinity School,
but I still wear a tie,
even when I’m sleeping.
It makes me feel like something tangible
depends on me
to establish its gravity,
hanging like a lodestone
when I wake up.
I’ve been weeping
in the nature poem
buried just beneath this one,
a melancholy lyric
whose bears mistake me
for the kind of ghost worth nuzzling.
The images keep deepening
and I go down with them,
pawing the tucked-in dirt
like a living vibration
until I can’t see anything
but the words I’ve been
yelling this song.

 

Christopher DeWeese published his first book, The Black Forest, with Octopus Books in 2011.

Click here to purchase Issue 01

From the beginning, The Common has brought you transportive writing and exciting new voices. We are committed to supporting writers and maintaining free, unrestricted access to our website, but we can’t do it without you. Become an integral part of our global community of readers and writers by donating today. No amount is too small. Thank you!

The Narrows

Related Posts

The Month When I Watch Joker Every Day

ERICA DAWSON
This is a fundamental memory. / The signs pointing to doing something right / and failing. Educated and I lost / my job. Bipolar and I cannot lose / my mind. The first responder says I’m safe. / Joaquin Phoenix is in the hospital. / I’m in my bedroom where I’ve tacked a sheet...

Image of glasses atop a black hat

Kaymoor, West Virginia

G. C. WALDREP
According to rule. The terrible safeguard / of the text when placed against the granite / ledge into which our industry inscribed / itself. We were prying choice from the jaws / of poverty, from the laws of poverty. / But what came out was exile.

Image of John Kinsella

Curlew Sixth Sense Bantry

JOHN KINSELLA
To take a liberty with lexicon / is remiss in the circumstances / of the curlew / with diminished habitat. / It reprises every day, / and the mudflats / sheeted by the in- / sweep of tide leads it to the mowed / grass in front of the Bantry / lifeboat...