Issue 19 Essays | The Common

Nothing More Human

April 27, 2020 Essays, Issue 19, Issue 19 Essays

You are in a chamber, waiting for the bailiff.

When he comes in, you wish you had been killed. Not your brother.

The rusted scent of the metal chair you’re on reminds you of the smell of his blood on your hands, chest, and hair: sweetly pungent with a strong hint of iron.

You start hearing his choked gurgles, see the blood spouting from his mouth. Smelling again the gunpowder-laced air between your body and his. The gurgling stops, his eyes close, and alarm strikes your throat numb, temporarily freezing your screams. His body begins to tremble, violently.

Brother Love

April 27, 2020 Essays, Issue 19, Issue 19 Essays

By TANYA COKE

Scrawny was my first thought. I’d babysat enough by then to place his age at just shy of a year. As my father handed him to me, the baby arched his back in protest, his chicken butt threatening to escape his diaper completely. I could tell that a man had fastened it, because the tape on the sides was all askew.

“Come, say hello to your brother,” Daddy said, smiling.

Upright Members in Good Standing

April 27, 2020 Essays, Issue 19, Issue 19 Essays

By A. KENDRA GREENE

The Common Magazine · “Upright Members In Good Standing” by A. Kendra Greene

My boyfriend does not come with me to the penis museum. While I pay the eight hundred Icelandic krona to visit 276 specimens of pickled, salted, or mounted manhood, Dustin is at home packing boxes. His home. He is sweating there in the triple-digit heat of a Texas summer, sweating as he arranges his life into banker’s boxes and carries them out in bulky white waves to stack against the blank walls of the new place, the place we picked out together, the first apartment we will ever share. And while all this packing and inventory and heavy lifting has everything to do with me, with us, with bringing an end to the long-distance phase of our relationship and making a life together, it does not yet occur to him that what he’s doing has anything whatsoever to do with an Icelandic penis museum. He has no idea that by the time he picks me up from the airport a few weeks later, I’ll want him to make a donation. Indeed, at first, I do not know it myself.