Wholesale

By MACEO J. WHITAKER 

In the village, we survey the damage:
every cedar lockbox smashed,
every pillow coated with blood, spit, snot.
The houses have crumbled. We discover

no envoy, no manual, no code in the clouds.
Into this scene a man—old Ozymandias,
in the flesh—staggers down the street,
a rum puppet, his strings yanking him

down down down. We let him cough
his lung dust onto his gravel. We pile
the prison whips high. So much stone.
So much rawhide and, yes, so much skin.

Some pray. Some shut their red eyelids,
hope for a coda, but no. No codas today.
There are many more villages to visit, so
let’s leave these prophets to their gossip.

 

[Purchase Issue 15 here.]

Maceo J. Whitaker lives in Beacon, New York. His poems appear in journals such as Beloit Poetry Journal, Boulevard, The Florida Review, Hotel Amerika, Linebreak, North American Review, and Poetry.

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!

Wholesale

Related Posts

Cover of All Is The Telling by Rosa Castellano

An Embodied Sense of Time: Raychelle Heath Interviews Rosa Castellano

ROSA CASTELLANO
I’m holding a blank page all the time for myself. That’s a truth that I choose to believe in: the blank page is a tool for our collective liberation. It can be how we keep going. I love that we can find each other on the page and heal each other, too. So, I invoke that again and again, for myself, because I need it.

Cloudy sunset over field.

Florida Poems

EDWARD SAMBRANO III
I will die in Portland on an overcast day, / The Willamette River mirroring clouds’ / Bleak forecast and strangers not forgetting— / Not this time—designer raincoats in their closets. / They will leave for work barely in time / To catch their railcars. It will happen / On a day like today.