It’s summer in Zion National Park, and I am thinking about water. Thunderstorms have felled trees and left silt in the air, and the river slicing through the center of the canyon rushes high and murky, the warm red brown of long-brewed chai. Sagebrush sweetness mixes with evergreen; cedar leaves rustle; and in the morning cool below mountains of rock, it doesn’t feel like Utah.
This week, as an end-of-summer treat, we present you three stories by The Common contributors originally published in our special Summer Fiction Issue. Enjoy!
Flood Control
This week, as an end-of-summer treat, we present you three stories by The Common contributors originally published in our special Summer Fiction Issue. Enjoy!
Here, The Weather Is Lovely
This week, as an end-of-summer treat, we present you three stories by The Commoncontributors originally published in our special Summer Fiction Issue. Enjoy!
The Servant
By BIPIN AURORA
It’s our pleasure to bring you new poems by four poets whose work will also appear in an upcoming print issue of The Common.
By SAHIBA GILL
1.
Over the past forty years, Industrial Realty Group has acquired over a billion dollars of America’s obsolete industrial complexes, former military bases, and corporate campuses for retrofitting, conversion, and privatization. In 2007, the firm acquired the newly closed Hoover Plant, two blocks from my high school. Hoover once made the world’s most famous vacuums, and its old headquarters are still tremendous, a magnificent crowd of red brick and white windowpanes that run along a green lawn and announce themselves in white letters, “The Home of Hoover Fine Appliances.”
Our July poetry feature celebrates the distinguished career of The Common contributor John Matthias with a selection of several of his poems from the last five decades. This year Shearsman Books completes the publication of the collected poems of John Matthias in three volumes: Collected Shorter Poems, Vol. 2 (1995-2011), Collected Longer Poems, and Collected Shorter Poems, Vol. 1 (1961-1994).
In a country so hot, and with such sugar hunger, you’d think the frozen dairy dessert field in Abu Dhabi would be crowded. But the United Arab Emirates is a relatively new country, with few home-grown stores, so imported chocolates and native dates dominate the sweet shops. When it comes to ice cream, a dozen kinds of Baskin Robbins is all there is. In grocery stores, there’s Häagen–Dazs too, but it’s the jagged, sickly pink BR that dominates each and every city superblock, including one on the ground floor of our Abu Dhabi apartment building—right next to the ATM.
This June, we’re showcasing poems by five new contributors to the print journal!
“Life has gotten real complicated, and when you think of Enchanted Forest, it’s not.” –Paul Kennedy, documentary photographer of Enchanted Forest
On August 15th, 1955, a month after Disneyland Park opened its gates, the second theme park to be built in the US lowered its drawbridge for the first time to a humbler fanfare.
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