Poet Dilemma

Hannah Brooks-Motl

Do I want secondsI want to write a great poem                Here just falling asleepThinking of animal names     inventing                A new way to do adjectives    Sustain the regard, all corrupted partsOf the diction    Can I enlist you?What’s true for the snail            Is splendor                                                  Bananas         crescent moons        there is rain and a virus outside         they are fallingin a strange occasion the morning will be                “all mine”      Golden hills against the greyish truth         cemetery appearing inthe old romances         proximal, notational         sketchy    A teenager on main street, it can’t besimply impressions         yet impressive how the stars                                                                                    arrangedTurmoils     the turgid passages        Luscious rash                                 I have learned to sayfrom a long list of murders         such ecstatic personal austerities                this great ensamplepresumption and arrogant visions                                                      make up Art’s heart   If you think words are made of poemsI mean poems made of wordsAs we’re taughtI know plenty of wordsThough I come from the provincesWhere the earth is filled with violenceAgentic, essentialTo what a human calls the worldIn high sunA dark cornerOdd fogIn vital personalityStanding at the fairI know dismay has some relation to lyricThrough repetitionAnd measureIs a breathing castleStacking lines togetherScience won’t destroy our enigmaBut does something to the glareThe peaks of theseNodding grassesRemind me of paradiseWhere sentiment is hard and clear

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Headshot of Hannah Brooks-Motl

Hannah Brooks-Motl’s fourth collection of poetry is forthcoming from the Song Cave in 2025.

Cover of Issue One of Common Place

Issue 1

Iowa City, Iowa

Editors
Hannah Piette
Scout Katherine Turkel
Samira Abed

Common Place publishes a small selection of poetry and poetics each season. Common Place understands poetry as a method for living, and vice versa. We are concerned with the everyday of thinking, looking, and reading.

Poetry provides our common place.

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