Aidan Cooper

Podcast: Pria Anand on “The Elephant’s Child”

June 27, 2025 Audio, Issue 29, Podcast, Podcasts & Audio

PRIA ANAND speaks to managing editor EMILY EVERETT about her story “The Elephant’s Child,” which appears in The Common’s spring issue. The piece is a vivid retelling of a Hindu myth, the origin story of the elephant-headed god Ganesh. Pria talks about the process of writing and revising many versions of this ancient myth, why she felt inspired by it, and how her literary writing intersects with her career as a neurologist. Pria also discusses her debut book, The Mind Electric: A Neurologist on the Strangeness and Wonder of Our Brains, out this month from Simon & Schuster. The book explores how story and storytelling can illuminate the rich, complex gray areas within the science of the brain, weaving case study, history, fable, and memoir.

Two Poems by Hendri Yulius Wijaya

June 5, 2025 Poetry, Translation

By HENDRI YULIUS WIJAYA
Translated By EDWARD GUNAWAN

Content warning: Some offensive slurs that appear in the source text have been carried over into the translation.

Translator’s Note

Fueled by far-right nationalist politics and religious extremism, persecution and violence from both state institutions and the general public against queer and trans Indonesians have reached unprecedented levels—mirroring similar disturbing patterns worldwide.

Celebrate 15 years with us in NYC!

May 12, 2025 News, News and Events

You’ve heard the good news — The Common is celebrating 15 years in 2025. Now here’s the best part: we’re throwing a party in New York, and you’re invited! Join us for an evening of refreshments, conversation, and mingling in honor of our 15th year in print.

The Month When I Watch Joker Every Day

May 5, 2025 Issue 29, Issue 29 Poetry, Poetry

By ERICA DAWSON

The month is February and that means
nothing because winter in Tampa is
the same as fall and spring so it could’ve
been easily Thoreau’s “September sun”
or Eliot’s “April is” blah blah blah.

Target Island

May 5, 2025 Fiction, Issue 29, Issue 29 Fiction

By MARIAH RIGG

Fifty-eight years before Harrison’s granddaughter is born, the U.S. government drops a two-thousand-pound bomb on the island of Kaho‘olawe. It is 1948. On Maui, the shock from the bomb is so strong that it shatters the glass of the living room window, and Harrison, a baby still in his crib, starts wailing in time with the family mutt.

Wandering

May 5, 2025 Amman Portfolio, Essays, Issue 29, Issue 29 Essays, Translation

By ALA JANBEK
Translated by ADDIE LEAK

Amman was culture, colorful walls, and distant souqs in the old city where Mama tried to buy everything we needed in one trip. Na’ur was where my grandfather built the mill near a spring, where our home by the hill watches the sun set behind Palestine, far from the chaos of the valley.

Heel

May 5, 2025 Issue 29, Issue 29 Poetry, Poetry

By RICK BAROT

I was jump-starting the car, having asked a stranger to hook up their car to mine. I was worried about her biopsy. Then I was talking to him about his new jacket, his awful landlord, his blinding headaches. He told me about left-isolate construction in sentences. I was writing, the work of it like a pilgrim’s progress conducted on one’s knees. Because the nights were so hot, I was unable to sleep. I was laughing because he insisted on building his own bookcases, painting them cantaloupe-orange. I was helping her clear out the backyard of junk. I was with her by the river. I was thinking of him, the taste of smoke on his lips. In the dusk, he showed me the lighthouse. I was often wondering where he was, day after day, the baseball cap that had to be taken off him to lean into his face. I was listening to the small dogs barking and making noise like small kids. I myself was being brought to heel.

[Purchase Issue 29 here.]

Rick Barot’s most recent collection of poems is Moving the Bones. He directs the Rainier Writing Workshop, the low-residency MFA program at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington.

To All the White Boys Who Love Me When I’m Manic

May 5, 2025 Issue 29, Issue 29 Poetry, Poetry

By ERICA DAWSON

and hypersexual and drunk and, how
should I say, easy, when we share a kiss

Hawk

May 5, 2025 Issue 29, Issue 29 Poetry, Poetry

By RICK BAROT

In the park we stopped and looked up at the high branch where the ferruginous hawk ate another winged thing, the torn feathers drifting down. The hawk made a noise, like a little lever of pleasure giving way inside. I thought of the question the choreographer asked her gathered dancers: What do you do in order to be loved? It was as though I’d been holding my breath the whole day, walking beside you. A strong spring light struck us. Next to you on the ground, your shadow looked like crumpled black paper.

[Purchase Issue 29 here.]

Rick Barot’s most recent collection of poems is Moving the Bones. He directs the Rainier Writing Workshop, the low-residency MFA program at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington.

Pie

May 5, 2025 Issue 29, Issue 29 Poetry, Poetry

By RICK BAROT

I took a class on how to make pie. When one desires tender fruit, a structured crust, gold at the edges, there is no ease. The teacher wore a black apron, serious as the stone inside the fruit. We stood around an industrial table, each with a bowl. Flour, yolk, shortening, sugar. Outside was summer. The oven hummed. What was called for was a teaspoon of salt. Now remove a pinch for the ocean beyond the window, its humid air. Now remove a pinch for what sweats from the fingers in the long kneading. You are always hungry. I’m your blue ribbon. I’m your huckleberry.

[Purchase Issue 29 here.]

Rick Barot’s most recent collection of poems is Moving the Bones. He directs the Rainier Writing Workshop, the low-residency MFA program at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington.