Sarah Wu

July 2022 Poetry Feature

July 28, 2022 Poetry

New poems by our contributors: ZACK STRAIT, FELICE BELLE, STEPHEN HAVEN, and MITCH SISSKIND.

Table of Contents:

Zack Strait | Fourth Ultrasound
| Dreams to Dream

Felice Belle | postcard from the moon
| the distance between you and me

Stephen Haven | Love at 60
| Sugar

Mitch Sisskind | The Ignoramus
| Only Death Wows Me

Fourth Ultrasound
By ZACK STRAIT

Like two passengers
in a wrecked automobile:

our eyes are fixed
on the sonogram screen—

an upside-down window
with no wiper blade

to sweep away the rain—
as the technician

Where Earth Meets Sky

July 26, 2022 Essays

By CLINTON CROCKETT PETERS

“It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth.” —Isaiah 40:22

In the cosmology of Patrick Burke, a flat-Earth believer, humans can spoon-eat uranium flakes like Cheerios.

The Hubble Space Telescope never existed, nor did dinosaurs. Hiroshima was dynamited, the Titanic sunk for insurance, and New Orleans flooded by government agents.

Earth—our sapphire speck, our pale-blue lifeboat in an ocean of dark—does not, after all, perch on a Milky Way tentacle. Earth does not spin like a Dervish; rather, its plane reclines and stretches beyond the thousand-mile-thick ice wall encasing us. The land reaches out, sprawling with undiscovered countries and unimaginable lifeforms. At some point, the world meets sky, earth bleeds into atmosphere, and God lives at that nexus of matter waiting for us.

Dispatches from MES FORETS/MY FORESTS by Hélène Dorion

July 6, 2022 Dispatches

Poems by HÉLÈNE DORION
Translated from the French by SUSANNA LANG

Poems appear below in both French and English.

Québec Province, Canada

Les racines
fendent le sol
comme des éclairs

avancent dans leur solitude
et tremblent

pareilles à une vaste cité de bois
les racines
s’accordent à la sève
qui les fouille

observent-elles les nuages
pour apprendre
la langue de l’horizon

At Home on the Range: A Review of Bitterbrush

June 29, 2022 Reviews

Film by EMELIE MAHDAVIAN

Review by HANNAH GERSEN

In recent years, female filmmakers have been carving out a space for themselves in the American West, redefining a genre and a place that is has historically been depicted as the terrain of lonely male cowboys and vigilantes. There have been period pieces like Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog, and Kelly Reichardt’s Meek’s Cutoff and First Cow, as well as contemporary stories set in the west, such as Chloe Zhao’s The Rider and Nomadland, and Reichardt’s Certain Women. These films bring a new realism to the western as they widen the lens to center female characters and to incorporate themes of friendship, romance, and community.

May 2022 Poetry Feature

May 26, 2022 Poetry

New poems from our contributors AKWE AMOSU, JUDITH BAUMEL, and ELIZABETH METZGER

Table of Contents:

Akwe Amosu | New citizen

Judith Baumel | Irij

Elizabeth Metzger | Talking to Jean about Love

| Talking to Jean about Love II

In the Fog

May 12, 2022 Fiction, Translation

By ADA NEGRI

Translated from Italian by LAURA MASINI, CHONA MENDOZA, and LINDA WORRELL

Story appears in both English and Italian below.

Translators’ Note:

“In the Fog” is taken from Le Solitarie (1917), Ada Negri’s first collection of stories, astute portraits of marginalized women struggling with poverty, exploitation and loneliness. Raimonda is a young woman who was horribly disfigured by a fire in her childhood. Only in the dense and murky fog of Milan, her face concealed by a “nebulous mass of vapors,” does she feel free.

We decided to work together at the close of a week-long Italian translation workshop at the British Centre for Literary Translation and we chose this story because we were captivated by Negri’s richly evocative prose. Much of our lively collaboration, helped along by Tuscan reds, seppie in zimino, minestra di fagioli and lesso rifatto, took place in Lucca and Florence.

—Linda Worrell, Chona Mendoza, Laura Masini

Hummingbird Tantra

May 2, 2022 Issue 23, Issue 23 Poetry, Poetry

By CORRIE WILLIAMSON

Everybody wants to let go, but how do you let go if you
don’t hold things?

—Daniel Odier, Tantric Quest

Red draws their tiny eye, and every hummingbird
feeder you can buy blooms a plastic, stoic
ruby, effigy of flower, tadasana of red. Already
they have eaten me out of sugar, but forgetful today

A Rage on Berbice, 1763

May 2, 2022 Issue 23, Issue 23 Poetry, Poetry

By LYNNE THOMPSON

Before I was north and south of a new country
I was divided from I was a tactic I was
a slave-trading port

On Foot

May 2, 2022 Issue 23, Issue 23 Poetry, Poetry, Poetry Recordings

By DIANE THIEL

The Common Magazine · “On Foot” by Diane Thiel

(after a line by Edith Södergran)

On foot, I had to cross the galaxy.
I left without luggage or gear, knowing
nothing I had would be of use out there.

Flashé Sur Moi

May 2, 2022 Essays, Issue 23, Issue 23 Essays

By ADRIENNE G. PERRY

He pulled up as I walked on the side of a busy Lyon road, the type that becomes a highway once it hits the outskirts of town. Ignoring the thick traffic behind him, he stalked me slowly in a compact car, beckoned to me through his open window, across the empty passenger seat.

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