To win you back, I wrote in vain
Of a place only the two of us know.
Where snow when it snowed wasn’t snow.
Where rain when it rained wasn’t rain.
That was the world.
That was the place
Where we lived—
![[No one can take my anger]](https://thecommononline.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/1419132290_c90a4c34e3_b.jpg)
not even you who caused it.
& no one can take my madness
not even my honied friends
who try to pull me back from
the edge of myself, who update
each other in the groupchat
of how my body is wasting
for Ange Mlinko
Of C. H. Krumm—Charles Harrison, or Harry—
a single trace remains on Catalina,
so oxidized, so salt-worn I could barely
make out the name. How many must have seen it
while rambling from or trudging to the ferry
and given it no mind, no second look?
Excerpted from Fairfield County
When asked what number Pal O Mine should run under, Moses had said, “Number seven or number three. Them’s divine numbers, alright. God made this whole world in seven days. And He’s a trinity: Father, Son, Holy Ghost. Cain’t go wrong with three neither.”
It wasn’t often that a Negro at the racetrack was asked his opinion such as this, but Moses was respected by the horse’s owner, so when it came time to prepare for the 1938 Carolina Jessamine Invitational, Mrs. Pynchon-Grant went right up to Moses and told him to pick the number.
The number seven would have put the stallion too far right of the field and closer to the stands of crowds, and so would have caused further distraction that would have leaked through Pal’s blinders and earplugs. That far out in the field and the thunder of the spectator’s cheers would drown out the footfalls of Pal’s competitors, and so the number three would put the colt closer to the center of action and increase the odds of victory—should he be able to run.
![[Freedom Song]](https://thecommononline.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/6780574655_9e0b767324_b.jpg)
what does it mean, to be free? i sip coke at my phuppos, azaadi
on the walls of the university, free kashmir sprawled, azaadi
on my body. when i walk the streets of lahore men stare.
can i write the poem that makes me free, that brings azaadi
to my lips? i say i want to drink from its waters, but i know
what it means to be human & dumb, to pray & when azaadi
comes to shun, to judge & say not like this. control, a bitch
deeply un-free, that sticks me in my own mind, azaadi
consider articulation, both speech
and the assembly of a joint,
the cooperation of bones and
marijuana; English: Mary Jane:
shoe, or the talentless friend you
secretly love who is also the pretty,
skirted woman in Spiderman who
A story is an offering—
something with a bright, burstable skin and tender flesh.
Whenever my mother gives me one of her stories, I watch her cut into it, lay it out for me in a way I can consume, in a way she can bear.
The dog is crossing a circle. Dawn light catching silver strands on a gray coat, saliva on a panting tongue, a red collar. A lost dog.
For an instant, we lock eyes, then I continue around and take the north exit. I’m in a hurry to get to the meet-up point. My first time running with others and I’m dreading it, but doctor’s orders and all that. Besides, I’ve promised my husband. I will be late, I will be late, I will be late, I say through my teeth, then pull over to look for the dog.
Despite the brief streaks of self-
belief, a stubborn defeat pervades.
Absent a job, absent a title.
I want to declare: a great undoing has taken place.
And I don’t know where to search for the bricks
that once made up the house of who I used to be.
![In Place of River I’ll Use [God]](https://thecommononline.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Ezza-Ahmed.jpg)
By EZZA AHMED
Ten days behind my tongue
summer in the diasporic,
riding thick in the smell of [God]
and fresh cloves.
By [God] I mean the monsoon season
where water appeared in snake-like streams
erasing all traces of my
present tense.
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