News & Events | Page 144 | The Common | A Modern Sense of Place: Stories, Poems, Essays & Images

To Abandon Paradise

October 29, 2018 Essays, Issue 16, Issue 16 Essays

That must be the saddest piña colada in the world, I thought as I walked by Barrachina, the restaurant famous for being the birthplace of the Caribbean drink. This was a few months after Hurricane María destroyed everything we knew, and Old San Juan, an epicenter of tourism in Puerto Rico, was still without power. No one was drinking piña coladas. No one remembered that this place was the world’s idea of paradise. A lush, tropical island in the Caribbean with a landscape that offers all shades of green, blue, orange, red, pink, yellow, and purple. White sand and turquoise waters, ripe fruits, and a breeze that smells fresh and salty as the sea or deep and powerful as the soil. The sun is warm all year long, and the tropical humidity just makes it all feel more sensual.

They Won’t Find Us in Books

October 29, 2018 Issue 16, Issue 16 Poetry, Poetry

By WILLIE PERDOMO

And after we officially gained entry into the Brotherhood of Bad Motherfuckers, what could our mothers do but lose sleep, wake into prayer, prepare herbs & apples, cursive the names of our enemies on loose leaf, & let their names dust in the sunlight.

Now everything is clean, rezoned & paved, tenements abandoned like whack parties, what is left for us to do but summon bullies from their graves & liberate ourselves from influence.

Native Shore / Orilla Natal

October 29, 2018 Issue 16, Issue 16 Poetry, Poetry, Translation

By MARA PASTOR
Translated by MARÍA JOSÉ GIMÉNEZ

This island is full of women
who come back the way
skeletons return with the surge
or turtles to their native shore.

In the Wake of a Disaster

October 29, 2018 Issue 16, Issue 16 Poetry, Poetry

By OKSANA MAKSYMCHUK

A flash of light—
out of the corner of my eye.
Fireflies, the thought flicks on—and dies.
Outside, the night air slaps my face
like a sheet of ice. Tufts of grass
crackle underfoot, porcupines
crawling up my spine.

The power goes out at night.
The house grows colder, its walls
begin to shiver, and we, its organs,
organize. My little son arrives
at my bedside, breathless,
in an inflatable boat.
We go to the window and search for signs.

Disorder everywhere: suitcases
strewn all over lawns, baby carriages
spilling bottles and toys, towers
of books toppling in the driveways. But the sky’s
perfectly ordered, still. In my chest I grope
for a moral law. And I find—
beating powerfully—a starfish.

Oksana Maksymchuk‘s writing has appeared in Words Without Borders, Poetry International, Modern Poetry in Translation, Los Angeles Review of Books,New Orleans Review, Salamander, Cimarron Review, and elsewhere. She won first place in the 2004 Richmond Lattimore and 2014 Joseph Brodsky / Stephen Spender translation competitions and received a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Most recently, she co-edited the anthology Words for War: New Poems from Ukraine. Maksymchuk teaches philosophy at the University of Arkansas.

[Purchase Issue 16 here.]

Handwork

October 29, 2018 Issue 16, Issue 16 Poetry, Podcasts & Audio, Poetry

By TINA CANE

Lucid dreaming is not a job but a steady occupation

I do not have a big dream they are only little dreams

and right now I cannot think of one

My father read the paper while my mother scrubbed the floor

I pay a woman $100 a week to help me keep my house clean

Natal Promise, Natal Debt: On the Recent Poetry of Mara Pastor

October 29, 2018 Essays, Issue 16, Issue 16 Essays

By CARINA DEL VALLE SCHORSKE

A Spanish translation follows the English.

Se acabaron las promesas, / decían nuestros carteles.
[The promises have run out, / our signs said.]

So many perfectly good words have been ruined: Promise. Paradise. Free. Even: Like. Love. Friend. We know that the task of the poet is to renovate ruined words, to make language livable again. To make sure the mouth doesn’t hang off its hinges. To make sure the flame of the tongue stays lit in the storm of speech. But what happens when the poet tires of her labor? In English, this word for work is the same as the word for what a woman must do to push a baby out of her body and into the world. Mara Pastor’s new book of poems, Falsa heladería (False Ice Cream Shop) emerges from a double exhaustion and takes a big breath—then lets loose a current of sound—from the other side.

After the Storm / Después de la Tormenta

October 29, 2018 Issue 16, Issue 16 Poetry, Poetry, Translation

By MARA PASTOR
Translated by MARÍA JOSÉ GIMÉNEZ

Dozens of cars
wait in line
for a little fuel.

At the gas station
they’re waiting for a ladder
that leads to a generator.

Muerto Rico: The Recent Portraiture of Adál

October 29, 2018 Essays, Issue 16, Issue 16 Essays

By MERCEDES TRELLES HERNÁNDEZ

[View portraits by Adál here]

Adál Maldonado’s photographic career is marked by surrealism and politics. And since Adál is Puerto Rican, both things frequently coalesce in images that are dark and humorous, introspective and ferociously critical. After studying at the San Francisco Art Institute, he spent several decades working in close contact with the the Nuyorican scene, creating a conceptual “embassy” and “passport for Puerto Ricans,” U.S. citizens who frequently get treated as foreigners in the United States because of their language, race, and culture. El Puerto Rican Embassy, which today has its own website, was designed to represent: “a new generation of experimental Puerto Rican artists working at the margins of established art movements – who take risks which illuminate contemporary issues, question established cultural aesthetics and challenge dominant political issues.” He has published seven books, the most recent of which are I Love My Selfie, in collaboration with Ilan Stavans, and Los ahogados / Puerto Ricans Underwater, a series first published through social media. In 2016 he relocated from the island of Manhattan to the island of Puerto Rico. (In)visibility and identity are the central concerns of his works, which he has explored extensively through self-portraits, celebrity portraits, and staged photography.

False Ice Cream Shop / Falsa Heladería

October 29, 2018 Issue 16, Issue 16 Poetry, Poetry, Translation

By MARA PASTOR
Translated by MARÍA JOSÉ GIMÉNEZ

She asked me for an ice cream machine.
When she said it her collarbones were pronounced.
They were beginning to wilt,
but her skin was the flesh of coconut itself.

Francois Villon Begins His Journey

October 29, 2018 Issue 16, Issue 16 Poetry, Poetry

By DAVID LEHMAN

[in memory of Paul Violi]

In this my thirtieth year,
Drunk and no stranger to disgrace,
I grin like a fool from ear to ear
Despite the trickle of tears on my face,
Clown that I am, condemned
By Thibauld d’Assole’s command,
Threatened and even damned
By the faker with the crozier in his hand.