Dream Ladders

By MATTHEW SCHULTZ

Immovable Ladder at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher; Jerusalem

Israel and Palestine

The story of the Immovable Ladder is this: it was left on a balcony of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem by a careless mason in 1750 and has sat there ever since. The six orders of monks, in whose ruthless stewardship the church is kept, have divided the church into blocks of turf, which they guard with fervor, and sometimes with fists.  It’s unclear to which sect the balcony (and by extension, the ladder) belongs. Any attempt to answer that question would be a threat to the delicate status quo that keeps the monkish violence at bay. And so the ladder sits. Undisturbed.

Dream Ladders
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June 2018 Poetry Feature

New poems by our contributors: NATHALIE HANDAL and STEVE KISTULENTZ

 

NATHALIE HANDAL

Lettera Lirica, Jerusalem

Because I see the shape
of your shadow in every city

Because you are on the edge
of every body of water

Because your language is tilted
towards the world

but you’ve kept some sentences
well-hidden

Because some words together
can frighten loneliness

like the lagoon moving aside
for the sea

June 2018 Poetry Feature
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Ask a Local: Elizabyth A. Hiscox, Gunnison, Colorado

With ELIZABYTH A. HISCOX

Trees in Gunnison, Colardo

Your name: Elizabyth A. Hiscox

Current city or town: Gunnison, Colorado

How long have you lived here: Four years (not yet a local by local standards)

Three words to describe the climate: Bright (year-round), frigid (in Winter), oxygen-deprived (great track & field team).

Best time of year to visit? Pick your outdoor poison/potion and it can be a year-round spot.

Ask a Local: Elizabyth A. Hiscox, Gunnison, Colorado
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Non-Native

By CATE LYCURGUS

Sand dunes at Tolowa Dunes State Park
Tolowa Dunes State Park, California

Sandy showed us how. She placed the shovel’s tip a few inches from a tuft’s base. Angled the handle back a bit, just enough to loosen the grass before she lowered, hand-pulling. This way, she explained, down to the source. Awards went to the biggest pile, longest root (you cannot burn grass off the dunes; the network just shoots back again), cleanest area too. Tawny tips waved in small breeze from the lagoon, off the lip of sea. But the grass is pretty, C said, and somebody murmured, agreeing. He traced the rake in arcs, looking down, but couldn’t swirl it far. European beachgrass (Ammophila arenaria) grows in clumps from rhizomes that spread four meters each year, so it’s no surprise beachgrass defines large stretches of Pacific coast. Pretty till you get a spine in your glove, E admitted, wincing. Until you get down close.

Non-Native
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Paris, April 7, 2018 Saturday

By GREGORY CURTIS

The towers of Church Saint-Sulpice.

Paris, France

I found a book by Georges Perec called Tentatived’épuisement d’un lieu Parisien, or An Attempt to Exhaust a Place in Paris. I like Perec very much. He loved word games and wrote crossword puzzles, and very often invented challenges for himself in his writing. In 1969 he wrote a book—La Disparition—in which the letter “e” does not appear. It was translated into English, also with no “e’s” but since the literal translation—The Disappearance—has three “e’s”, the English title is A Void. In 1972 Perec wrote Les Revenents, in which “e” is the only vowel in the book. Perec died of cancer in 1982 when he was only forty-six.

Paris, April 7, 2018 Saturday
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Join Us for Weekly Writes, Volume I

weekly writes

 

Weekly Writes is a ten-week program designed to help you create original place-based fiction and nonfiction.

Volume I launched on July 1, 2018. Volume II coming soon!

Sign up for Volume 1 is now closed. The $15 fee includes one free, expedited submission after program completion.
Join Us for Weekly Writes, Volume I
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The Cloak Room

By MARIA TERRONE

St. Joan of Arc classroom and cloakroom revisited, 2018

St. Joan of Arc classroom and cloakroom revisited, 2018

 

Queens, New York

 The very sound of it was foreign to our ears. Who wore cloaks? Vampires. Stealthy spies with hidden daggers. And men in top hats who appeared in movies and old-fashioned story books. Certainly no one we knew as first-graders at St. Joan of Arc—except, perhaps, for the nuns whose sleeveless black capes swirled in their hurried winter walks through the schoolyard to the convent. But their habits covered every inch of skin up to their necks; even their brows were partially obscured by fabric stiff as cardboard and white as their bony hands—the only other flesh exposed. So, on second thought, we couldn’t really say we “knew” the nuns when their very bodies were concealed and their lives outside the classroom a mystery.

The Cloak Room
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The Common @ the National Book Foundation’s Why Reading Matters Conference

National Book Foundation logo
Are you an educator? Do you work with students? Join us as The Common editors present at The National Book Foundation’s third annual Why Reading Matters conference on June 7 at St. Francis College in Brooklyn. 

A man presents at a literary conferenceEditor in Chief Jennifer Acker and Associate Editor and Director of The Common in the Classroom Elizabeth Witte will be joined by Katherine Hill, a TC contributor and Assistant Professor of English at Adelphi University, for a panel discussion: Reaching from There to Here: broadening student perspectives through place-focused literature.

Check out more details on the conference here. TC readers receive a 15% discount on registration with the code: NBFFRIEND

The Common @ the National Book Foundation’s Why Reading Matters Conference
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