Issues | Page 26 | The Common

The Sea Dreams of Us

October 25, 2021 Issue 22, Issue 22 Poetry, Poetry

Before the sea became my journey, it was love,
folktales, it was our origin staring at us,
it was our shadows, then the ships of migration
came, reminding us, that years back, people left
in canoes loaded with hope, with spices, seafarers
who navigated water, holding stars in their bosoms
until the sky became road. We never saw them,
only heard the rumors, only heard they grew wings

Quarantine

October 25, 2021 Issue 22, Issue 22 Poetry, Poetry

By HERA NAGUIB

Tonight, I halt to prior ghosts
that upwell again, funerary as the sirens
that shrill through the tracheal alleys.

Snake, Not Serpent; Hopelessness, Not Despair

October 25, 2021 Issue 22, Issue 22 Poetry, Poetry

By ANGIE MACRI

We shouldn’t use Latinate words,
too many syllables, abstractions, flowers.
Instead, use words with Germanic roots,
shorter, to the point. As if half our tongue
was wrong. As if flowers, too,
didn’t belong. Oh, you know what I mean.
Yes, I do: erase those empires and the gods. Say fall,
not autumn; ghost, not phantom;
drought, not famine; fire, not flame.
We have aches, not pains, graves, not tombs.
As if no one from such places
could speak of concrete things,
as if no one came here from such places at all.
Like immigrant. Say one who comes.

Angie Macri is the author of Underwater Panther, winner of the Cowles Poetry Book Prize. Her recent work appears in The Cincinnati Review, The Fourth River, and Quarterly West. An Arkansas Arts Council fellow, she lives in Hot Springs and teaches at Hendrix College.

[Purchase Issue 22 here.]

Fixation

October 25, 2021 Issue 22, Issue 22 Poetry, Poetry

By HALA ALYAN

It’s like knowing there’s
a house on fire and only
you have the key, but
there’s no address, the
streets keep changing
numbers, and if you
don’t make it in time,
everybody inside dies.
Even the houseplants.
You never make it in
time. I still like my
brain. This feels as
impossible as crown
shyness, but it’s true—I
feel its lure flash like a
camera bulb sometimes,
the magic and the grief
like two rivers necking
where they meet.

Joyriding in Riyadh

October 25, 2021 Fiction, Issue 22, Issue 22 Fiction

By TARIQ AL HAYDAR

“Saudi wastemen came over the bridge for boozy orgy celebrations.” —Noor Naga

The horror of the city. As Dhari tapped the steering wheel, he calmed himself by visualizing the beautiful woman who should be sitting next to him soon: shoulder-length blonde hair and sky-blue eyes. He eyed the two security guards idling at the gate of the hospital, joking with each other. The gangly one spit on the ground, then turned to the one with long hair, who handed him a cigarette. Dhari’s friend Dawood got caught with a woman he wasn’t related to once. Dawood was actually lucky to spend only a week in jail, but Dhari knew he couldn’t handle prison for even a day. If only he could have been born somewhere else, where people weren’t separated from one another like this. Whenever he watched American movies, he marveled at how men and women got together, threw dinner parties, clinked glasses. Relationships, dances, first kisses, all these things were taken for granted. How would they view Saudi weddings? Separate ones for men and women. At a wedding, all one did was shake men’s hands, drink tan Saudi coffee in small ceramic cups, and sit, waiting for meat and rice to be served.

There’s No Ignoring It Now

October 25, 2021 Issue 22, Issue 22 Poetry, Poetry

BY JEREMY MICHAEL CLARK

For days, doubt struck as does lightning across the span of night. Illuminated that way,

how did we cross the river? One stone, then another. The silence between us a keyhole

through which I peeked & found you teasing off your robe. Love? If it exists,

My Body as the George Washington Bridge All Lit Up at Midnight

October 25, 2021 Issue 22, Issue 22 Poetry, Issues, Poetry Recordings

By ALEXANDRA WATSON

The Common Magazine · "My Body as the George Washington Bridge All Lit Up at Midnight" by Alexandra Watson

434 wires unlock the land
double-decked suspension
hot for incandescence
a 14 lane corridor
top exposed
stiffening truss
to come over

limbs sling across the chasm
100 million self propelled cells
carbon hardening soft iron
opens all 29 tolls
bottom enclosed
can’t afford
unanchored

On Sugar and the Carnival of War

October 25, 2021 Issue 22, Issue 22 Poetry, Poetry

By COLIN CHANNER

At-sink coffee;
way horizon curry lined.

We’re spilling turbinado
as we spoon out in half light.

Khaleej Times #1

October 25, 2021 Issue 22, Issue 22 Poetry, Poetry

By REWA ZEINATI

the war drove us out—
and into my father’s used white sedan—

Family of Origin Rewrite: 1982

October 25, 2021 Issue 22, Issue 22 Poetry, Issues, Poetry

By K. IVER

My father teaches ethics at a university.
My mother teaches ethics at a university.
They save. Their money. Buy
a large bungalow in Connecticut.
They continue. Saving. Enough
to support the San Francisco AIDS
Foundation and their baby.
They read the news and wish kindness
into our laws. One of them will say
Sweden hasn’t been to war since 1812.
The other says you can start a business
in Sweden and get free healthcare.
They’re excited. About my arrival.
They remain. Calm. When
midnight cries wake them.
My father waits. For my mother to heal.
Before asking for sex. She’s good.
At saying no. She throws meditation
and exercise and intense therapy
at her trauma. Still goes to AA.
When wrong. She promptly admits it.
Every night she arrives home from
the university. Her soft. Low voice.
Builds a replica in my throat. She wears
minimal. Makeup. Cuts her nails down
because who needs the fuss. When I walk.
Into a room. And see my father.
I continue walking in. When my father
and I leave. The house. Lots of women
introduce themselves. When we get back
he tears. Their numbers over the trash.
On weekends my father and I dig
in the dirt. I watch him plant
lilac bulbs around the spruce. He lets
my small hand pack the ground.
Affirms it as help. When my father puts.
me to bed with true stories of him
sewing clothes for new mothers
in Ukraine. I fall asleep fast.