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Finis

April 26, 2021 Issue 21, Issue 21 Poetry, Poetry

By VIRGINIA KONCHAN

There is no enough in exile.

After Surgery, My Father Helps Me Bathe

April 26, 2021 Issue 21, Issue 21 Poetry, Poetry

By ANTHONY BORRUSO

Jobless, 26, a ghastly scab marching
from the base of my skull down

Devotion

April 26, 2021 Issue 21, Issue 21 Poetry, Poetry

By ELIZABETH SCANLON

Your mother is a creep.
Everyone’s mother is a creep;
we have envelopes of your teeth in our bedside drawers,
clippings of your hair. We check your browser history.

Back Door

April 26, 2021 Issue 21, Issue 21 Poetry, Poetry, Poetry Recordings

By SUSAN COMNINOS

The Common Magazine · “Back Door” by Susan Comninos

or, sonnet of cheating with a friend’s man

Something about the hinge
of your hips, the way you held them straight

when you danced. You pushed my palm to fringe:
the pelt of your belly, then sought the gate

April 2021 Poetry Feature

April 22, 2021 Poetry

National Poetry Month 2021: New poems by our contributors MAKALANI BANDELE, FELICITY SHEEHY, GEORGE RAWLINS, and VERNITA HALL.

Table of Contents

makalani bandele | “unit_33,
a higher-level unit now”

Felicity Sheehy | “Stations”

George Rawlins | “To Be Human”

| “Epistle to the Hangman’s Mistress”

Vernita Hall | “Chauvet Cave: Divination”

Reina María Rodríguez: Poems in Translation

April 1, 2021 Poetry, Translation

Poems by REINA MARÍA RODRÍGUEZ

Translated by KRISTIN DYKSTRA

Translator’s Note

At first, it seems simple to outline the role of place in poems by Reina María Rodríguez. She began writing poetry in Havana, Cuba, a city that permeates much of her work. She grew up in a building on Ánimas Street, not far from the ocean, in a neighborhood of modest means. Eventually she and her partner built a tiny apartment on that same building’s roof out of largely recycled materials, and there they ran a historic, open-air cultural salon in the 1990s. Today Rodríguez remains interested in everyday life, in the realities accessible to inhabitants moving through the city streets. Alongside her explorations of the present, she incorporates memories from her neighborhood into many poems.

March 2021 Poetry Feature: Sylvie Durbec

March 25, 2021 Poetry, Translation

Poem by SYLVIE DURBEC, translated from the French by DENIS HIRSON

Sylvie Durbec was born in Marseille and lives in Provence, near Avignon. She writes texts in both prose and poetry, as well as painting and making collages. The many books she has published over the past twenty years include the prose-poetry memoire Marseille : éclats et quartiers (Marseille, fragments and quarters) which won the prestigious Jean Follain prize; Prendre place (Taking place) concerning the internment camp at Douadic in France and Soutine, a prose-poem about the painter, published in The Common. This year she has published 50 carrés du jour (50 squares of the day) and Ça qui me poursuit (That which pursues me).

Denis Hirson grew up in South Africa and has lived in France since 1975. He has published nine books, several concerning the memory of South Africa under apartheid. The latest, both published in 2017, are Footnotes for the Panther, ten conversations with William Kentridge, and Ma langue au chat, in French, concerning the torture and delight of speaking and writing in that language.

Table of Contents

The Ignorance of Beasts

The Ignorance of Beasts

I still don’t know how to type a tilde on a computer keyboard

when writing the name of a Spanish or Portuguese writer I love.

Nor do I know what poetry is.

February 2021 Poetry Feature

February 25, 2021 Poetry

Poems by REBECCA MORGAN FRANK, JEFFREY HARRISON, CALEB NOLEN, and ALEXANDRA WATSON.

Contents:

Rebecca Morgan Frank | I hold with those who favor fire
Jeffrey Harrison | Hazards, 2020
Caleb Nolen | The Deal
| Jonah Years
Alexandra Watson | when the party’s over or, portrait of an addict zero days sober or, my mom sent me this book healing the addicted brain

LitFest 2021: Poems by Tommye Blount and Natalie Diaz

February 19, 2021 Poetry

Amherst College’s sixth annual literary festival will take place virtually this year, from Thursday, February 25 to Sunday, February 28. Among the guests are 2020 National Book Award poetry finalists Tommye Blount and Natalie Diaz. The Commonis pleased to reprint four of their poems here.

Join Tommye Blount and Natalie Diaz in conversation with host John Hennessy (poetry editor of The Common) on Saturday, February 27 from 11am to noon.

Register and see the full list of LitFest events here.