Issues | Page 72 | The Common

Mowing

November 1, 2016 Fiction, Issue 12, Issue 12 Fiction

By ELIZABETH POLINER
That summer, even before she took up mowing, Suzanne was doubting herself, an uncertainty that set in when her husband began to notice the Mandlebrauns’ oldest daughter, Alison, soon to finish college. Alison, who lived in the only other house on their riverside lane, was home in Middle Haddam for the summer and came by to play tennis on their court with their daughter, Michelle, also soon to finish college. The girls, never close friends to begin with, had drifted further apart during their time away at school. It was surprising, then, to see them suddenly pair up, even if only for tennis.

The Blue Hat

November 1, 2016 Issue 12, Issue 12 Poetry, Poetry

By WYATT TOWNLEY

The forecast was wrong.
The bald guy smiling
but wrong. The blonde
with swinging hair

wrong. Their software,
their reading of currents. Rain,
they said, rain for days.

Wythe County in July

November 1, 2016 Issue 12, Issue 12 Poetry, Poetry

By DOLORES HAYDEN

Stare…

—Walker Evans’ advice to young artists

So here’s a board-and-batten house—
a wall of planks with ragged ends
behind the windows’ splitting sills—

Virgil’s Tattoo

November 1, 2016 Issue 12, Issue 12 Poetry, Poetry

By MAX FREEMAN
Virgil got his tattoo in Megara
Around the time he knew that his great poem
Must be destroyed. A reckless decision.

Rico Gatson: Selections

November 1, 2016 Issue 12, Issue 12 Art, Studio

By RICO GATSON

Introduction by David E. Little

What was required was a new story, a new history told through the lens of our struggle.

—Ta-Nehisi Coates

They say there’s nothing harder than hitting a fastball. In America, clichés on the difficulty of sports abound. But how to describe the challenges of art?

The Next Thief of Magadan

November 1, 2016 Fiction, Issue 12, Issue 12 Fiction

By VLADISLAVA KOLOSOVA

The luxe door had cost them everything. Oak, with wooden lace. It gave the impression there was more behind it than:

one bed,

one couch,

one cupboard,

one telephone,

one twenty-year-old TV set at full volume, and

two eighty-three-year-old women.

He was the seventh thief in the last two years. They came as reliably as seasons.

Every Month is Black History Month

November 1, 2016 Essays, Issue 12, Issue 12 Essays

By SUSAN STRAIGHT
When my youngest daughter began her freshman year of high school, I said casually to her, “Do you ever see Christian?”

She gave me an incredulous and dismissive look. She replied, “Why would I see him? He doesn’t go here. He’s probably not in school at all. He probably fried his brain dying his hair all those colors.”

And then she was done. She talked about something else. But I kept picturing him. Forever to me he will be the boy who called my child a nigger and spat on her when she was ten.

The Village Idiot

April 30, 2016 Arabic Fiction, Fiction, Issue 15, Issue 15 Fiction, Translation

By MAJIDAH AL-OUTOUM

Translated by ALICE GUTHRIE

We awoke one morning to news of a death. The person we had lost was the one we used to call the Village Idiot—that buffoon who used to make us laugh and cry at the same time, that leaping, dancing ball of energy who would hurl himself around, wild with enthusiasm, stomping on our toes and crashing into us as he went gesticulating by.

Issue 11 Art

April 6, 2016 Issue 11, Issue 11 Art

A compilation of the Visual Art from Issue 11.

Metallic face sculptures

All What Will Remain. Photography. Bahaa Souki.

Collage Toy Men—Plastic Women. Mixed media on wood, 84 x 69 cm, 2012. Bahaa Souki.

Collage

Decision Keeper. Mixed media on canvas, 100 x 100 cm, 2014. Bahaa Souki.

Painting-- man walking a dog

One Arm Man With His Dog. Oil on cotton paper, 95 x 68 cm, 2015. Bahaa Souki.

Two people holding one another

Home, Part 1. Photography, 105 x 70 cm, 2013. Ons Ghimagi.

Two people sitting back to back

Home, Part 2. Photography, 105 x 70 cm, 2013. Ons Ghimagi.

Woman sitting against a wall on the phone

In the Mood for Love. Photography, 105 x 70 cm, 2013. Ons Ghimagi.

Sculpture of a figure 010. Oil on canvas, 100 x 120 cm, 2004. Bader Mahasneh.

Figure sitting 017. Archival print of 3 editions, 90 x 90 cm, 2010. Bader Mahasneh.

Painting Tamimi Untitled. Acrylic on canvas, 175 x 95 cm, 2015.

Painting of three figures under an umbrella

Untitled. Acrylic on canvas, 80 x 80 cm, 2015.

Figure in red

Untitled. Acrylic on canvas, 80 x 80 cm, 2015.

Collage of children and birds

Child’s Message (1). Mixed media on canvas, 100 x 100 cm, 2014.

Collage of child angels over building

Cold Breezes. Mixed media on canvas, 100 x 100 cm, 2012.

Collage of children and buildings

Dialogue. Mixed media on canvas, 200 x 100 cm, 2015.

Photograph of dancers

The Original Fall. Photography. Bahaa Souki.

A Space for Dreaming

April 5, 2016 Arabic Fiction, Essays, Issue 11, Issue 11 Essays

By M. LYNX QUALEY

Scholars of Arabic literature were, for a time, obsessed with naming a “first” Arabic novel to stand at the head of an apparently new literary tradition. Was it M. H. Haykal’s 1914 Zaynab? Was it one of the many novels that were serialized in popular magazines that sprouted up in Egypt, Syria, and Lebanon in the late 1800s and early 1900s? Or perhaps Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq’s peripatetic, language-glorifying Leg Over Leg (1855)? Never mind that al-Shidyaq mocked the obsessions of European writing.