Issue 18 | The Common

The Idle Talk of Mothers and Daughters

October 29, 2019 Essays, Issue 18, Issue 18 Essays

A statuette of the Virgin Mary stood guard as my mother and I sipped from glasses of wine cooler on our living room floor. We’d propped our front door open to let in the breeze, leaving only a flimsy screen between our shelter and the world outside. Every once in a while, we’d hear our neighbor calling for her wayward son or the laugh track of a sitcom playing too loudly in the next house over. We’d echo it with giggles of our own, seated on faux mink blankets from the Philippines laid over ceramic tile.

Choosing a Transitional Object

October 29, 2019 Issue 18, Issue 18 Poetry, Poetry

By LUIZA FLYNN-GOODLETT

Snip Hansons from Teen Beat while debating
Taylor versus Zac so passionately a curl escapes
its barrette and your best friend tucks it behind

Revenge in the Name of All Owls

October 29, 2019 Fiction, Issue 18, Issue 18 Fiction

By KATHERINE VAZ

The fifth child of Jorge Primavera and Deolinda Oliveira Primavera was born with a hole in his heart. The doctors said: There is nothing we can do.

His father worries about his newborn boy being afraid of darkness.

LDR

October 28, 2019 Issue 18, Issue 18 Poetry, Poetry

By BERNARD FERGUSON

the great ramble of the roads toward the airport, the flight
up & down the flight of stairs inside the house in which
i work now, inside the city & its parks that sprawl long & point
toward the river, which points toward an ocean, the soft hush of the air
conditioning unit above my bed, the drop of rain against my window

Ana Mendieta Haunts The Block

October 28, 2019 Fiction, Issue 18, Issue 18 Fiction

By GABRIELLE LUCILLE FUENTES

Simon Marshall (interning tour guide, Art History, ABD) stands in the empty gravel yard of Donald Judd’s museum in Marfa, Texas. The sun dips below the high walls of the compound, illuminating a perfect half of the courtyard. Behind Simon a wide expanse stretches, interrupted only by Donald’s outdoor dining table, still holding two copper pots, as if the artist has just stepped inside to catch a call and has not been dead for decades. Simon, having shooed away the final tourist of the day, crosses the courtyard to lock the gates. The gate rears far above his head, solid wood aged to black and buttressed by iron. He feels medieval whenever he does this—who else but a feudal lord would need such protection? Tonight, there’s a moment of resistance before the door shuts and a figure, shadowed and slightly blurred around the edges, pushes through him. Literally right through him.

All I Have is What I Have Given Away

October 28, 2019 Essays, Issue 18, Issue 18 Essays

By SUSAN R. TROCCOLO

“No one has mastery before he is at the end of his art and his life.”
—Michelangelo

On that bright morning in November—the first day I saw her—Anna Lea Lelli wore the outfit that distinguished her on the streets of Rome: a long cape and beret. The beret emphasized her craggy jaw and prominent Roman nose. Under her Scottish wool cape, Lea wore a gray suit in gabardine and a cream-colored silk blouse with French cuffs and pearl cufflinks. Just the right amount of cuff showed under the suit, no doubt perfectly tailored to her years ago. At her neck was a silk scarf, on her hand a carnelian ring carved with the face of Mars. She held a cane with the silver head of a horse, the patina worn from the warmth and pressure of her hand.

Pilgrimage to A Killing

October 28, 2019 Issue 18, Issue 18 Poetry, Poetry

By R. ZAMORA LINMARK

Dear friend, take me to where they dragged you.
Show me the plaza flanked by homes made
of hollow blocks, plywood, rusty tin sheets—
anything to keep rain and flies out.
Point to me the CCTV that followed you
across the basketball court with its torn nets
and kids scrambling home to screaming mothers.

Draft Day

October 28, 2019 Fiction, Issue 18, Issue 18 Fiction

By KATHERINE HILL

“Hey. Hey, y’all! It’s Jimmy Johnson.”

The first time Caleb said it, Mitch vaulted the arm of the couch and was on the telephone in an instant, faster even than he’d cut on the field. Cindy remembered when her son moved purely for the joy of movement. Not today. Today it was all about the draft. How high he would go, where he would go, and how much money he would get. Cindy watched him listening, bug-eyed, the receiver to his ear, and thought to herself, Dallas—okay, yes, I could live in Dallas. They’d just won the Super Bowl.

Labor Day: Brighton Beach

October 28, 2019 Issue 18, Issue 18 Poetry, Poetry

By NATHAN MCCLAIN

How lovely, at last, to have nothing to do but sit, shirtless, in my collapsible chair, reading Gerald Stern’s American Sonnets, and lovely to sit, beer in my lap, just a little tipsy, lovely, too, to ignore beauty, or desire, or whatever, the young woman unfolding her nylon tent, smacking each stake into the sand with her sandal’s heel, slipping discreetly into her swim suit, though I could watch the plane zip past, tugging a banner for Wicked, which there was still time to see if you wanted, or the sailboat glide slowly by, and it was a good day for sailing, a good day, so I didn’t have to think about sorrow or loss, though, let’s face it, I did, how not to—the old man missing a left leg—not how it happened, or when—but if it gets easier, you know, living with it, crutch snug under each armpit, and Jill had been gone a long time to warm her goat curry, then further out, a jet ski, like a straight razor, slits the water’s surface, Carmen already asleep under a sun hat.