The Common Issue 23

A special portfolio of Palestinian stories in translation from Arabic, fiction set in 15th-century Italy, Appalachia, and the Texas-Mexico border, essays from India and France, and poems by Mary Jo Salter, Tina Cane, G. C. Waldrep, and David Hernandez.

holy war
JORDAN HONEYBLUE how long has my womb ached / to carry half of my laugh gently // set in the upside-down rainbow stretch / of their father’s smile? he is every color // bent into black to tell / a story that light cannot read. // he that deep like the first organ / blossoming to beat in embryos // that…
Letter to Emily Brontë
JANE SATTERFIELD I’m writing this from lockdown on a day / when the dogwood throws out its dose / of darker pink. The schoolyard / across the street is wreathed in yellow / caution tape. I’m weighing uncertain / evidence on vectors & runners’ strides— / what practiced motion keeps us safe, what / physics of distancing?
Ropa Usada
FERNANDO A. FLORES Cassie knew she could make extra money selling vintage clothing on the internet, so in her first semester out of grad school, she drove to Chulas Fronteras Ropa Usada, down by the border in the maquiladora district. The bouncer at the door weighed Cassie on a scale as a shoplifting precaution, and handed her a ticket, along…
A Letter to Kofi Annan
MAHMOUD SHUKAIR Abdelghaffar, owner of the tallest building in the quarter—built by the sweat of his brow, as he reportedly doesn’t tire of saying—is pacing up and down his rooftop, stressed about the stray dogs that have been disturbing the neighborhood’s sleep with their nonstop barking every night.
Granada
SUHAIL MATAR Ayed heard these sentences inside the shawarma shop where he worked on Calle Elvira. As he turned around, he recalled what had been uttered just previously, in the middle of the evening rush: “Assalamu alikun, Ayed!” “Wa ‘alaykum as-Salam. How are you, Tony?” he answered in Arabic.
Adoption Day
MARK KYUNGSOO BIAS Our cat died before the towers fell. / No one was in the ground yet / when you were / close to coming home. Mom said you couldn’t enter. / Said our country couldn’t trust // the planes. The mother mouth shut to everything / but the wind. // When you close a country, eventually / nothing…
The Roc Flew Over Shahraban
SAMIRA AZZAM Slowly, we raised our heads as hellish cries echoed in our ears, and we looked up in awe and fear. The sky was a summery blue with no trace of a cloud, and the sun had spread out, occupying every corner. We lowered our gazes, licking our bluish lips as we exchanged panicked glances.
From Lockdown Garden
ARVIND KRISHNA MEHROTRA Left untrained, / the bitter melon’s taken over / the mulberry, dusting it // with small yellow flowers. / The females will shrivel, / then elongate with the goodness // of bitterness. The males / will drop by the wayside / no sooner than they’re touched.
Night’s Froth
KHALED AL-JEBOUR Drowsiness weighed down my eyelids, so I stretched myself out on the mattress, swimming in the shadows made by the light of the single candle, lonely in the cold, rugged corner where it stood. My friends had been sleeping for an hour or so. I nodded along to their continuous, flutelike noises, a steady chaos.
Drop Your Coins From The Skyscraper of Love
MELISSA STUDDARD And if you have no coins or skyscraper, / then parachute from your mind into blossom // and if you have no parachute or mind, / then walk three times around a burning fire // and if you have no fire in your foot, invite / the shut-eyed horse to rest on your shoulder.
Questions for the Night I Said I Love You
ALDO AMPARÁN Is he a saguaro burning in the desert’s shadow—or a sidewinder’s tracks on sand— / Have I left footprints in the snow of his dreaming— / Has he dressed his dead in marigold & fed them sweet bread—(have I—) / Are his hands two blades of light slicing open your dimming—
Curses
EYAD BARGHUTHY He stormed out of the house, yelling and cursing. His belly, hemmed in and taunted by high-waisted underpants (which had once been white), flopped over his waistband as if trying to flee from his too-short pants. He cursed those raucous kids; cursed their parents, those bastards...
Who Drew the Curtains?
SHEIKHA HUSSEIN HELAWY The pores of life are clogged in this room. Making it difficult to breathe. There’s a hanging smell of death that’s impossible to miss. Visitors are unnerved by it. Except those visitors whose nerves have been hardened by the tedium of their dutiful weekly visits to the woman at the far end of the room...
Oh, My Nana
SUHEIL ABU OKSA DAOUD As if this apocalyptic scene weren’t savage enough for God, the rain brought with it thunderstorms and gales that threatened to uproot the streetlamp and thin cypress trees dotting the neighborhood. It was freezing cold, and my grandmother crouched in a corner of the house near the dakhoon...
Well-Lit Garden
ZIAD KHADDASH I was leaving El Rafidayn supermarket in Ramallah. I had bought coffee, wet wipes, and two cans of tuna. One of the Israeli occupation’s patrols was parked at El Rafidayn roundabout. I was alone in the area, and the hour was approaching midnight.
A Letter to Leena
MARY JO SALTER I came when you were born, / but soon the flying stopped. / By the time I came again, / we drove in private cars // masked our public faces / like bandits bent on crimes / that had already happened; / once home, we’d wash our hands // of greed and disregard / while in the…
Three Omens of Federico da Montefeltro
BEN STROUD With his knobbly horns, his puzzled hide, and his great neck, he had clearly been made for a far different existence in his home beyond the Nile, a home for which even the library’s grandest atlas possessed only the most rudimentary of maps.
The Hindiyeh Museum of Art: Selections from Palestine
THE HINDIYEH MUSEUM OF ART in Jordan exhibits a distinguished collection of contemporary Arabic art from the start of the 20th century to the present, with frequent new acquisitions from established and emerging artists.
The Birthday
EIDER RODRÍGUEZ At the end-of-year meeting, the teacher had informed me that Izadi needed to take up a sport, “discover the strength she had inside her,” “meet people,” “socialize,” “work on her independence.” The teacher said these things and other things, just as he did at the end of every school year.
Breakfast of Champions
TINA CANE I woke up in a panic this morning thinking what if my love language / is granola? I found a quiz online but was too chicken to take it having had / Russian bots once read my face and place me alongside a woman holding a mango / or some bullshit in Gaugin.
To My IUD
MADELEINE MORI I’m halfway home to Bed-Stuy / when I feel the cervical cramp. / I was told they’d be getting worse / after I had it installed two years ago, / the little T pulled up by the arms / out of its soft white box, reflecting / into my own pale face like a flag
Public Fishing Dock
RALPH BURNS I let out a whoop. And my father wore anger, / he fixed on it, the things he built were landscaped / by it. / So he slapped hard. And the ringing / is a triangle. Steel and wand. Two in back, / one in front, our poles out the car window.
The Stranger
ABEER KHSHIBOON How could this boy, who knew nothing about her, so quickly choose one of her favorite songs? For a while, Farah remained silent, flabbergasted by the coincidence and lost in the song. She was used to people preferring different songs...
George Rapp 4th of July
G. C. WALDREP Bids slowly wish. / With camellias. / With rose hips bee / balm with honey. / Swimming lesson. / Did you lock out. / No I fell down / at the stream’s side / a crash of horns. / Moss is intelligible. / Let us go there / & then let us betide. / There are many…
The Marching Bands of Mahatma Gandhi Road
LIESL SCHWABE The image that continues to resonate with me, however, is from that hot, humid night on the landing, under the tube lighting, with the Mahboob Band. And how, after the first few minutes of music, a pack of kids jostled their way up the stairs.
Spin
CHERYL COLLINS ISAAC Hawa closes her eyes, drifts with the sensation of rocks pounding palm nuts open, small fingers reaching inside for kernels. They are teenagers again, and he is her caring boyfriend who brings her palm kernels for snacks when she lies sick with malaria.
Day Trip
IZZAT AL-GHAZZAWI The women gathered to shower Om Saber with congratulations, tears of joy burst open the heavy years of silence, the young men danced, and Saber rode his white horse confident and smiling, the house behind him trembling with the voices of the little ones whose time was still to come.
Flashé Sur Moi
ADRIENNE G. PERRY He pulled up as I walked on the side of a busy Lyon road, the type that becomes a highway once it hits the outskirts of town. Ignoring the thick traffic behind him, he stalked me slowly in a compact car, beckoned to me through his open window, across the empty passenger seat.
Corn and Turns
LAUREN CAMP if I see and forget field thick over field, the stalks / cut against green—how will I fetch forth the half-dead / memory of the 6 train stuffing its way into the Bronx, as it rolled the same / every day over the florist and the florist’s locked gate, over // the circle of urban dirt and suits,…
Pastoral
MICHAEL DUMANIS I was excited to see every sanctuary, / jaguar, then sloth. / The bright fluted flowers taller than any / in central New Jersey / welcomed me along the periphery / of the dusty byway. / I spotted a kinkajou loping / over a telephone wire...
In Which Raging Weather is a Gift
ELLEN DORÉ WATSON I could use / some music to muffle the barely audible / visitor, but I’m low on batteries and despite the wine/ sweating and losing its cool, it’s my eyes/ the candlelight has me havinga row of fat-wicked / flames doing the hula.
Mosaic School
JOHN POCH The youngest deconstructionists among us / are proud at first to spend their days breaking up / great slabs of fired tile every shade of wine / while the masters climb the scaffolds / with their gold pride, their gilt, reaching for / a sandal buckle or the heights of a halo.
Landscape with Cheetah Going Seventy in the Serengeti
DAVID HERNANDEZ That’s what that russet brushstroke is / below the skyline—her spots / lost in the open plains. That’s hunger / that blurs her. We cannot see / what she is chasing, but we can / imagine it. Zebra. Gazelle. Impala. / Antelope.
On Foot
DIANE THIEL On foot, I had to cross the galaxy. / I left without luggage or gear, knowing / nothing I had would be of use out there. / It felt long, but I can’t say quite how long. / Time unfolds in space, and I soon realized / this wasn’t the average pilgrimage.
Of Prayers and Orisons
BENJAMIN PALOFF It has become the first ritual of morning to throw / the door open, welcoming the breeze now free of / evening’s biting insects, another in a long line of / self-justifications: it will arrive whether it’s / welcome or not. As will the birds, who know when you breakfast / and on what...
A Rage on Berbice, 1763
LYNNE THOMPSON Before I was north and south of a new country / I was divided from I was a tactic I was / a slave-trading port / Before I was remade as Amerindian / I was sugar as the main crop / Before I was overworked and underfed / I was selected for immediate punishment
Side Mirror
J.D. SCRIMGEOUR You’re floundering in flashes of light and dark, / so after a few minutes you scoot inside / because January’s cold, and ask your wife for help, / embarrassed you can’t do even this simple task. / She peers over her glasses, studies the tape, / then returns it unstuck, separated...
The Woman in the Well
ANU KUMAR For nearly two years of my life, I lived with a ghost. It was when my father, a civil servant, was posted in Sambalpur, a now forgotten town in northern Odisha, a state in India’s east. Newspapers then, and even now, always added the descriptor “India’s poorest state”...
Idlewild
Nathan Jordan Poole It seemed, in those first few months after the accident, that he and his wife would remain with each other, if only to have the presence of their pain burn as brightly as it could—how they relished and needed it, in those early months. It was right to keep the fuel together, to let it burn.
Hummingbird Tantra
CORRIE WILLIAMSON Red draws their tiny eye, and every hummingbird / feeder you can buy blooms a plastic, stoic / ruby, effigy of flower, tadasana of red. Already / they have eaten me out of sugar, but forgetful today / I’ve left the sliding porch door wide, and on my couch / a cheery wool blanket...