Issue 29 | Fall 2023

What We Held in Common

Justin Vicari

Some people, by mere overlap of luck,

Guessed at parts of your soul by looking

Into your eyes, so you thought and sought

To hand them back a key. “Open me up,

Come inside, snatch the pearl,” you wished

To say. But the key they wanted was usually sex,

And you were no good at that. Frightened by

The consequences. You didn’t want anyone

To see your weird body, your penis that didn’t work.

You didn’t want anyone to know and see

What you liked to do. Music moved you around

Like a stronger spine, and sometimes the key

Was a book you had read, or dinner out.

But love—for that is what it always felt like

When a perceptive stranger gleaned your secret—

Love doesn’t need to be slipped any key opens

The door. Love just comes in clean.

About the Author

Justin Vicari is a poet, film and literary critic, and translator. Vicari is almost completely self-taught, although they attended classes in writing and philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh. Vicari’s first full-length book of poems, The Professional Weepers (2011, Pavement Saw Press), received the Transcontinental Award. Their second full-length book of poems is In Search of Lost Joy (2018, Main Street Rag). Their multi-genre work has appeared in such journals as Rattle, Fence, Illuminations, Rogue Agent, Third Coast, Hotel Amerika, Spoon River, Barrow Street, Oranges & Sardines, Interim, 32 Poems, The Ledge, Southern Poetry Review, The Pedestal, Postmodern Culture, BlazeVOX, Two Lines, Salzburg Poetry Review, American Poetry Review, Cahiers d’Octave Mirbeau, and others. In 2020, Vicari was nominated for Best of the Net. Their translation of J.-K. Huysmans’ A Dilemma, published by Wakefield Press, was chosen by the French embassy as one of thirty must-read French books for the summer of 2015.