Audio

LitFest 2025 Excerpts: Video Poems by Paisley Rekdal

February 12, 2025 Audio, Poetry, Poetry Recordings

Amherst College’s tenth annual literary festival runs from Thursday, February 27 to Sunday, March 2. Among the guests is PAISLEY REKDAL, whose book West: A Translation was longlisted for the National Book Award. The Common is pleased to reprint a short selection of video poems from West here.

Join Paisley Rekdal and Brandom Som in conversation with host Ruth Dickey, Executive Director of the National Book Foundation, on Sunday, March 2 at 2pm.

Register and see the full list of LitFest events here.

Not

What Day

Heroic

Paisley Rekdal is the author of four books of nonfiction and seven books of poetry, most recently West: A Translation, which won the 2024 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award and was longlisted for the National Book Award. The former Utah poet laureate, she teaches at the University of Utah, where she directs the American West Center.

Real Estate for the Blended Family (or What I Learned from Zillow)

October 21, 2024 Audio, Issue 28, Issue 28 Poetry, Poetry

By ELIZABETH HAZEN

The Common Magazine · Real Estate for the Blended Family by Elizabeth Hazen

The houses are photographed with light in mind:
The sun, they say, is shining here. The filter

hints at lemons: fresh laundry on a quaint
old line. The “den” becomes the “family room”

where we’d play rummy and watch TV, the square
footage enough to hold all of our misgivings.

Dominus

October 21, 2024 Audio, Issue 28, Issue 28 Poetry, Poetry

By ANGIE MACRI

Danger, 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,

In Montgomery County

October 21, 2024 Audio, Issue 28, Issue 28 Poetry, Poetry, Poetry Recordings

By THEA MATTHEWS

The Common Magazine · “In Montgomery County” by Thea Matthews

Maryland, 2020

My partner wears the panopticon,
and I carry the rope. Hungry
for the rush, the chase, we locate
the missing black calf
about two-tenths of a mile
from East Silver Spring.
He’s wearing a long-sleeve
jersey T-shirt, navy blue jeans.
He’s three and a half feet tall,
and I can tell his age means
nothing to him. In his mind,
he treads with no care.
The report says he threw
a basketball, knocked over
a computer, and ran off
the school premises.
He looks at us, begins to wail.
My partner grabs him by the arm.
There is no crying! I taunt.
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.
He wails even louder,
and screams, “No!”
He’s hyperventilating.
I command him to stop.
When the mother arrives,
I affirm point-blank,
We want you to beat him.
Beat him down to size,
the size he fits into a curb drain.
Beat him with your hands.
You can smack that butt, repeatedly.
My partner pulls out his handcuffs
to handcuff the boy,
the boy whose wrists are like
two thin stocks of red tulips.
My partner affirms,
These are for people
who don’t want to listen
and don’t know how to act.
The boy feels the cold steel of erasure,
of his name replaced by numbers.
The boy needs to learn,
or else…
We warned him.

Thea Matthews is a poet, author, and editor of African and Indigenous Mexican descent. Originally from San Francisco, California, she lives in Brooklyn, New York. Read more at TheaMatthews.com.

[Purchase Issue 28 here.]

Call and Response

April 22, 2024 Audio, Issue 27, Issue 27 Poetry, Poetry

By TREY MOODY

The Common Magazine · Call and Response by Trey Moody

My grandmother likes to tell me dogs
understand everything you say, they just can’t
say anything back. We’re eating spaghetti

while I visit from far away. My grandmother
just turned ninety-four and tells me dogs
understand everything you say, they just can’t

It’s Important I Remember That Journalism Is the First Draft of History—

April 22, 2024 Audio, Issue 27, Issue 27 Poetry, Poetry

By CORTNEY LAMAR CHARLESTON

The Common Magazine · “It’s Important I Remember That Journalism Is The First Draft Of History”by Cortney Lamar Charleston

and Ida B. Wells, well, frustrated
the engenderment of the official record;

crisscrossed the country interviewing
poplars that had been accessories to atrocities,

Symphony of the South

April 22, 2024 Arabic Fiction, Audio, Fiction, Issue 27, Issue 27 Fiction, Translation

By TAHIR ANNOUR
Translated by MAYADA IBRAHIM

The Common Magazine · "Symphony Of The South" by Tahir Annour, Translated by Mayada Ibrahim

Dew
Uncle Musa died. A year after his passing, my father headed north. He said he would be back in a month.

It all happened so fast I barely caught it, like a migratory bird resting in a dark corner of the forest, like all the things that crowd my memory. No sooner do they appear than they vanish. When I try to recall the details, to understand what happened, none of it makes sense. Time lures the mind into letting go, submitting to the abyss, but I know the mind is capable of reaching into the well of the past. All these memories, from time to time they pierce through the pitch-black darkness. They gleam and fade into the shadows of this exile, of this rotten world.

On one of the shadowy days before his departure, I accompanied my father to the farm. It was the afternoon. Our farm was just outside the village. People were drying their earthenware in the sun: cups, bowls, pots, censers, jars. Children ran around them and erected little churches. They waded deep into the mud, sinking their hands in as if into spilled blood—the blood of an offering, perhaps—smearing their faces and tossing it at one another. They yelled and called each other names. Their clothes were the color of rust, their faces crocodile-like.

Atlanta Spa Mass Shootings

April 22, 2024 Audio, Issue 27, Issue 27 Poetry, Issues, Poetry, Poetry Recordings

By ANN INOSHITA

The Common Magazine · “Atlanta Spa Mass Shootings” by Ann Inoshita

This poem is excerpted from Eh, No Talk Li’dat.

Eh, No Talk Li’Dat, an anthology forthcoming from Kaya Press, is centered on Pidgin, or Hawai‘i Creole English. The following poem is excerpted from this anthology.

Pidgin began as a dialect of trade between Native Hawaiians and Western seafarers and merchants and evolved as a Creole language in the sugar plantations in the 1920s and ’30s, yet, until today, it is deemed substandard by school administrators and is not recognized as a Creole language by the State Department of Education. It is the only language I can think of in the U.S. that was co-authored by the various ethnic groups in the islands: Native Hawaiians, Pacific Islanders (Samoa, Tonga), sugar planters and migrant laborers from Asia (China, Japan, Korea, the Philippines), Portugal (Madeira and the Azores), and Puerto Rico. Recent speakers and innovators of Pidgin include transplants from Micronesia. In addition to the poems, stories, and excerpted plays, all written in Pidgin and contributed by over forty of Hawai‘i’s writers, the genre-defying Eh, No Talk Li’Dat includes archival materials, newspaper articles, transcripts of televised comic skits, and comic strips.

— R. ZAMORA LINMARK

March 16, 2021

Trump blamed China fo COVID-19
calling da virus Kung Flu and da China virus,
so get pleny people from pleny states going afta Asian Americans
blaming Asians fo da pandemic.

Theology of Flight

April 22, 2024 Audio, Issue 27, Issue 27 Poetry, Poetry, Poetry Recordings

By CHRISTOPHER BAKKEN

The Common Magazine · “Theology of Flight” by Christopher Bakken

Morning wind speaks a dialect of smoke,
brings news from yesterday and tomorrow:
what’s burning there will soon enough burn here.

One bullet. Even a rumor of bullet
restless in the chamber of a neighbor’s gun.
To run, before he arrives with his god.

Among Trees

April 22, 2024 Audio, Issue 27, Issue 27 Poetry, Poetry

By JAMES RICHARDSON

The Common Magazine · “Among Trees” by James Richardson

We watch the trees the way we watch the birds,
sitting more quietly than we have to,
though trees do not respond to sudden motion,
a crossing fox, a knock on the window,
or anything less momentous than the day.