A father is only as good the tree house he never builds
Which he’s promised to his children before
they were script on checkbook, a practiced inheritance
from his father, and his father’s
father.
Untitled from the Jane Doe Series
There’s so many of us here: hood boys taught
discipline through bowing and bare feet, through
knowing the leg is just as much of the punch as
the knuckle.
By ERICA DAWSON
Kool G. Rap said, Cover your head
’cause it’s a dead zone in the red
zone. Rap said, God, now this is ire.
1999
My mother comes to visit me every few weeks. There’s nothing unusual about that, except she lives in a nursing home she isn’t supposed to leave. She wraps what used to be my father’s long winter coat over her shoulders, pays one of the nurses to sneak her out, and climbs into the back seat of an idling car that waits outside.
By LAURA MAHER
When people speak of my city’s river, they say: declined. What they mean is: dry. Only modern cities can survive on the promise of water. Early people settled just east of the river, on the then-fertile floodplain that offered easy access to water, mud, fish, grasses, all the necessary components to forge a life in the desert. In the summer, I imagine cool breezes.
Tucson lies in a valley between four mountain ranges, so each range becomes a landmark. A trained eye can decipher a way through the desert using these mountains alone, though this eye will also see the lines of cottonwood trees, will find where water runs silently underground—the Santa Cruz River (translation: “Holy Cross”) long buried under a bed of pummeled stone, sand, bits of mica.
When I was with the bartender,
I didn’t see a field of yellow flowers
when I closed my eyes.
There was no superbloom
the way there’d been with you,
and my heart didn’t burst open
when he put his mouth to my mouth.
Untitled
From the Room 11 Series
Translated by Thoraya El-Rayyes
How to make a cup of hot chocolate
Stand in front of the window of your kitchen refuge and prepare the following ingredients:
Darkness, my sibling,
I have a story to tell you
Last shabbes I was chased by the law into Bed
Stuy streets for passing out pamphlets
decrying America’s uncles.
Don’t miss an issue! Subscribe to The Common.