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

Hitting a Wall and Making a Door: A Conversation between Phillis Levin and Diane Mehta

DIANE MEHTA and PHILLIS LEVIN
This conversation took place over the course of weeks—over daily phone calls and long emails, meals when they were in the same place, and a weekend in the Connecticut countryside. The poets share what they draw from each other’s work, and the work of others, exploring the pleasures of language, geometric movement, and formal constraint.

Anna Malihot and Olena Jenning's headshots

August 2025 Poetry Feature: Anna Malihon, translated by Olena Jennings

ANNA MALIHON
The girl with a bullet in her stomach / runs across the highway to the forest / runs without saying goodbye / through the news, the noble mold of lofty speeches / through history, geography, / curfew, a day, a century / She is so young that the wind carries / her over the long boulevard between bridges

Image of a tomato seedling

Talks with the Besieged: Documentary Poetry from Occupied Ukraine  

ALEX AVERBUCH
Russians are already in Starobilsk / what nonsense / Dmytrovka and Zhukivka – who is there? / half a hundred bears went past in the / direction of Oleksiivka / write more clearly / what’s the situation in Novoaidar? / the bridge by café Natalie got blown up / according to unconfirmed reports