Celebrating 15 Years
Excerpt from The Undercurrent
SARAH SAWYER
They will join the two lonely streets together, and the mice will disappear, and the tall grass, and maybe the bluebonnets too. Probably the girl will be allowed to ride her bike from here to the other side of the neighborhood. The new street will be hers, too, after all.
Excerpt from Group Living and Other Recipes
LOLA MILHOLLAND
My mom sets her bike seat high—she claims it keeps her left foot from cramping. As she pedals, her butt swishes across the saddle, side to side, so she can reach each pedal at its lowest point. I bike a little ways behind ... The Amish in their fields and buggies wave at us.
Excerpt from Tripas
BRANDON SOM
One grandmother with Vicks, one with Tiger Balm, rubbed / fires of camphor & mint, old poultices, / into my chest: their palms kneading & wet with salve, / its menthols, to strip the chaff & rattle in a night wheeze. Can you / hear their lullabies?
Home and/or Home: Seán Carlson Interviews Erin Fornoff and Gustav Parker Hibbett
ERIN FORNOFF
You sometimes have to modulate these stories from home. Like, I would be at the pub, talking to Irish people, and mention that my childhood dog got killed by a bear. And it was just like a record scratched.
Dispatch from Marutha Nilam
SAKTHI ARULANANDHAM
With the swiftness and dexterity / of a hawk that pounces upon a chicken / and takes it by force, / the bird craves / snapping up a vast terrain / with its powerful, sharp beak / and flying away with it. // When that turns out to be impossible, / in the heat of its great big sigh, / all the rivers dry up.
What We’re Reading: February 2025
KATHARINE HALLS
Being an Arabic-English translator, I’ve usually got a book in both languages on the go at any one time. Hands down the best two things I’ve read recently are Rawaa Sonbol’s short story collection Do, Yek and Susan Finlay’s novel The Jacques Lacan Foundation.
- ANTÒNIA VICENS One Sunday afternoon, as he leaned over the railing on the roof terrace, moving his fingers, moving his hands, moving his whole body, as if his bones were decomposing, it wasn’t hard at all, no, and it wasn’t even much of a physical effort.
- CAMPBELL MCGRATH I wore a crown. I shat out New Worlds. I fucked countesses / and courtesans, ballerinas and dairy-buttered damsels. / This century will be my last. The Era of Titanic Peasants / recedes and the future wriggles free of old categories.
- MÒNICA BATET At first it made her feel less alone, but later, as she walked on, the lilting sounds morphed into ever more frightening screams, and she had to crouch and cover her ears. Then the ivy shot up and closed in on her, snake-like, twisting around her feet and ankles.
- FARAH PETERSON I could not let her go / For the cherries from / Saturday’s market I used / a sharp coffee spoon / each bright heart-organ / hoards the clit of the fruit / I stabbed and extracted / hurting my thumb / sometimes I couldn’t get / all the meat off
- BRAD LEITHAUSER “Happy and furry?” she inquires, / of the TV— / but I’ve tuned out. Uh-oh, this may be / tough to unriddle. When you’re eighty-three, // as she is, with creeping dementia—all / sorts of imponderables float by, / and everything the more inscrutable
- BOB HICOK Caroline resembled moonlight. / She never appeared when it rained, / made the grass and broken windows / more beautiful, and had me wondering / if our love was waxing or waning. / Yes, she said whenever I asked.
- JILL PEARLMAN Maybe I’m dreaming in the haze with its gleam on my railing, / I dream of bridges, renewal of the world that is also the mind’s renewal / eggs stuck with a few stalks of hay held by manure / fecundity recycled back into a rose
- ZACK STRAIT We thought our need was for the wild summer blackberries. But we were foraging for another memory to sustain us through the evil days to come. And as we ate, the past ripened in clusters for us there among the thorns.
- IQRA KHAN I begin as revelation. As explosion of glottal light against silence. / I am again asking for directions to the Haram, my ankles fluent in Arabic. // I am again asking for direction, ya Haram, my ankles flowing with Arabic! / Hagar, watch how God transforms this wilderness
- MARIA JOSEP ESCRIVÀ There are no paths on the asphalt. Only / a longing for wings. Destiny or planet / of soap, fading pupils speculating / on foolish things: our evanescent lives.
- GRAY DAVIDSON CARROLL It’s January, and in my environmental health science class / this afternoon we talked about Rachel Carson and Silent Spring / And with the EDM pumping through my brand-new noise-canceling headphones / I can’t hear the sounds of the world outside my windows
- CATIE ROSEMURGYWhile Jane never existed, / her sudden sexual hungers and more frequent tenderness / most likely did. / Oh, Jane. You aren’t a child anymore. / Here’s a pinewood doorway for you to stand in. / You started off as a tree...
- OLENA JENNINGS We are stretching towards each other, / words tangling. The words can’t always / be torn apart. Sometimes you / are ти. Sometimes we touch. // Two languages grow close / to one another. They take / the form of plants, vines / intertwining, the leaves of letters.
- THEA MATTHEWS To lasso a calf, cowboys / must first use their weight / to hold the animal down / and then tie the legs together. / Does your mama spank you? / The boy shakes his head. / I tie the boy down with— / She’s gonna spank you today. / I’m gonna ask her to do it.
- MATTHEW TUCKNER In my favorite picture of you, the hair blown across / your face, obscuring your face, it’s easy to make out, / deep in the distance, the hangers of the air force base / classified as a superfund site, a sprawling huddle / of buildings expanding out into the extent of the valley.
- KWAME OPOKU-DUKU Was it all simply adornment, / watching the rain fall from the sun, / or the mourning dove that carried / the wallet-sized photo in its beak? / Looking back, it was true— / I had stopped seeing the beauty in it all, / living from moment to moment, / looking to be granted some small sense / of pleasure,…
- NATHALIE HANDAL He placed his wet lips on mine, and said: / Rome’s history spans three millennia. / Which streets are most alive in you? / He took my green blazer off, / and said: Look at these pines, / look at the ruins of Palatino, / Rome’s mystical birthplace.
- MAURA STANTON But here am I, another “I” / complaining about a favorite broken glass. / Shouldn’t I write about nature and beauty? / By God, I hear you laughing at me, / you hedgehog of a poet, ready to roll up / and point your dangerous spines at anyone / who thinks that poetry should praise not blame.
- KATHERINE HOLLANDER Once there was a rainbow / beyond it, and it was suppertime, and we all came out to look. / I said my faith in humanity was restored / and Bruce said, // A rainbow / has nothing to do with people. And he was right. I gestured / behind us at everyone who had left their plate, and…
- SHANE CASTLE He recognized it for an absence—no, the absence of silence—a something. He would look back years later and remember it as a sub-rosa gnawing that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once, so that, for a moment, he actually wondered if the sound was coming from inside him, like he’d awakened himself, grinding his teeth in…
- By ZORAIDA BURGOS Wearily, but firmly, we twisted / our feeble trunks / around a stump / alone but not sad amid other trees, / entangled roots / clinging till the last / to our rough stony ground.
- ELIZABETH L. HODGES I’m not being cursed because I had sinned— / I’m earning my keep in this grisly trade. / For that I am traif, but come along in. / I’ll lead you to places you’ve never had; / to hell in a basket: one bloody as.
- ANGIE MACRIDanger, as in strangers, men or women; / as in twisters at night when you couldn’t / see them coming; as in the machines that made work so easy you forgot / to watch what you were doing,
- IMMA MONSÓ Morning after morning, Lisa would wake up with an easily achievable aspiration: to eat breakfast while contemplating the house at the bottom of the valley, which stood in the distance amidst the fog. When the fog started to fade, she could make out frost-covered shingles...
- ROBERT CORDING I’m standing in the exact spot / of this photograph, looking at the past— / my middle son, still alive, lying on the rug / at my feet in my oldest son’s house. / On his wide chest, his niece, weeks old, / sleeps, adrift perhaps in the familiarity / of the heart’s steady beat, her memory /…
- TINA VALLÈS Hunger can’t be explained. It’s always unbelievable, especially the hunger of a child. Imagining my father starving when he was younger than ten years old makes me want to time-travel back to my grandparents’ store and bluntly ask: Why did you let your son starve when you had a store full of food?
- JAMES K. BOYCE A human hand reached into the burrow and lifted the downy chick into the daylight. A man carefully measured its wingspan to ascertain the Kid’s age: eight to fourteen days, old enough to self-regulate its body temperature but young enough to imprint on a new home.
- WYATT TOWNLEY Walking is falling forward. Running // is falling faster. Watch the dark. It falls / so slowly while the sun yanks the rug // out from under you. At night some fall over / a book into a story. Some fall // for each other. We have fallen all the way / here.
- ADRIENNE SU I have come to my senses. / I believe in books, / but they have their place. / The flowers in them lack scent. / Books cannot feed you; / they are at their worst / when imitating romance, / not because they don’t / get it but because / they do: romance is mental.
- DOUGLAS KOZIOL “What happened here?” she asked, tracing her finger along the E-shaped scar on the back of Laura’s hand. The woman’s fingers felt like live wires on Laura’s skin. She pulled her hand away and slid it beneath her thigh. Fatimah stood there, unfazed. Was it possible she didn’t know?
- MERCÈ IBARZ Close, so close he can already taste it. This afternoon he’ll become the owner of a secret. But first he’ll have lunch with his mother, who’s waiting for him at the restaurant in the back of the Boqueria Market, and once he’s got her home safely, he’ll meet up with the current owner of a Picasso engraving and…
- IRENE PUJADAS “You need to take responsibility for your life,” F states. She finds it embarrassing to waste a Saturday morning on this nonsense. She then adds: “Do us all a favor and put an end to this circus—or, at the very least, sit in the middle.” You stay where you are.
- CARLOTA GURT On June 6, 1981, the department store El Águila, located on the Plaça de la Universitat, burned to the ground. The fire was talked about all over. The mythical building, crowned by a statue of the homely bird that gave it its name, collapsed, imperial fowl and all.
- DOLORS MIQUEL In the ravine the river roars / the rocks seem made of glass, / the snow swaddles it all, / icy hands on the reins. / In the ravine time demands / in a deep invisible voice / just one human life / to turn into flesh and be free. / Just one human life. // On the cliffs of my soul
- MEGAN TENNANT Before we peel off to bed, Ruth suggests we close with a prayer. We all bow our heads, the buzz of the fluorescent light and grasshoppers growing louder in the silence. I hear the tones of my dad—earnest, grateful—and I feel my head become heavy, my closed eyes twitching.
- ELIZABETH HAZEN Sometimes I dream of gardens— // that same dirt they kick from their cleats could feed us, / grow something to sustain us. But it’s winter. // The ground is cold, and I dare not leave this room; / I want to want to fix this—to love them // after all—but in here I am safe.
- MICHAEL DAVID LUKAS Any story—any history, for that matter—is a series of inclusions and omissions, a series of truths and deceptions. The story Grandma Betty liked to tell about her life was not dissimilar to the one Grandma Guta and Grandpa Abe told about theirs. A story of hard work and progress, another version of the American Dream.
Using The Common in my first-year seminars has been fun, fruitful, and helpfully startling for these classes.”
—Martha Cooley, Associate Professor of English, Adelphi University Receive classroom subscription discounts, lesson plans, and more when you TEACH THE COMMON »
