Issue 13 | Page 2 | The Common

Fallow

April 21, 2017 Fiction, Issue 13, Issue 13 Fiction

We were unemployed and without a place to go, but we got up in the morning and pressed things under the iron anyhow. Our parents turned us out of their houses, telling us to Go get some fresh air!, then locked the doors they refused to give us keys to. We piled up in the streets like garbage, a dozen of us on every block, sitting open-legged on the curb in department-store suits. There was me, Mike, Paul, and all the rest of the guys we’d grown up with. We were a decade and a half past high school graduation, loaded down and barely breathing under stubble and spare tires and thick letters from Sallie Mae, but there we all were, out at the bus stop again.

Firsthand Account

April 20, 2017 Fiction, Issue 13, Issue 13 Fiction

By BRUNA DANTAS LOBATO

The plan was to take the bus to my father’s farm, to see him in person for a change. My mother said, Your father is too busy for you, and you don’t know his wife. But I went anyway. I wanted to be able to say that my father was unavailable, firsthand account.

I packed only one large duffel bag, and my mother drove me to the bus station. She told me, Call me if you need anything. I said I’d call her every day.

I didn’t mind the nine-hour ride.

Motel

April 20, 2017 Issue 13, Issue 13 Poetry, Podcasts & Audio, Poetry

By ZACK STRAIT

There is a dark blue bible in the nightstand, a pitcher and torch

stamped on the cover in gold. I rub this symbol

with my thumb and I am comforted, knowing another

man was in this room before me, just to

place his light here.

The Eunuch, The Colombian, & The King

April 20, 2017 Fiction, Issue 13, Issue 13 Fiction, Issues

By MENACHEM KAISER

The Eunuch

In the courtyard were more of these men and women who—how should I describe them?—who still were. They didn’t do anything except exist. They sat, alone or in silent clusters. None would say yes to an interview. I circled the courtyard, asking. Most did not even say no.

Guy Gever Stands in a Field

April 20, 2017 Fiction, Issue 13, Issue 13 Fiction, Issues

By: BETHANY BALL
From What to Do About the Solomons?

Now it is just a question of what to do with Guy Gever. For extra money he works in the evenings to frighten the birds that eat the crops in the fields around the kibbutz. At night, he hunts the porcupines, the dorban, and sometimes the tiny kipod, the hedgehogs, with his brothers. But now people think he has gone mad.

Good Boys

April 15, 2017 Issue 13, Issue 13 Poetry, Podcasts & Audio, Poetry

By MEGAN FERNANDES

Once in a car, a good boy
shook me hard. If you like it
that way in bed, then why are you…
the tiny bruises on my arms
where his prints pressed into my pink
sleeves rose to the surface like rattles.

On Leaving the Mountains and Coming to the City I Thought I Left For Good

April 15, 2017 Issue 13, Issue 13 Poetry, Poetry

By VIEVEE FRANCIS

Without the backdrop of leaves and scat,
the possum playing possum, its mate
the same. Without the tip of the road,
its black pitch wound like a widow’s wail
through the wet trees. Consider the undergrowth

Before Vaudeville was the Next Big Thing

April 15, 2017 Issue 13, Issue 13 Poetry, Poetry

By MARC VINCENZ

So—in they slot and plop in their perfectly

burnished 180-calorie-sandwiched-glory:

a delectable mélange well-clothed in filigrees

of dietary fibers, sodium, zero trans fat

and generously acidic to keep the heebie-jeebies

at bay

The Beauty of Boys Is

April 15, 2017 Issue 13, Issue 13 Poetry, Poetry

By VIEVEE FRANCIS

that they are not men,
that they have not settled into their beards and
remorse, their crow’s feet and givens.
There is not yet an investment in houses
settling onto their foundations, hair, or
yesterday. The boy senses his time is precarious,

Under Current: Tidal Pull

April 15, 2017 Issue 13, Issue 13 Art, Studio

By AMANDA VALDEZ

Where do your shapes come from? This is a common question I encounter.

I dislodge shapes stored in my body through the act of drawing. These shapes originate from a vast matrix of experiences. There are typically three categories of overt reference: art and archeological objects I seek out through research and travel; landscape; and direct physical experiences (floating on a lake, running in the woods, dance, aging, sex).