This week, as an end-of-summer treat, we present you three stories by The Commoncontributors originally published in our special Summer Fiction Issue. Enjoy!
The Servant
By BIPIN AURORA
It’s our pleasure to bring you new poems by four poets whose work will also appear in an upcoming print issue of The Common.
Excerpt from the forthcoming novel Mañana Means Heaven:
Wednesday, October 22, 1947
The workers couldn’t stop talking about it. Especially that whole first day after it happened. According to the paper, a “wetback” was found strung up in a sycamore tree near Raisin City. From his neck dangled a cardboard sign:
PARASITE
The Fresno County Coroner confirmed that because nowhere on the body were there bruises or scrapes the only logical explanation was suicide. A common occurrence among braceros. Naturally. They missed their families back home. Depression was inevitable. Fear was constant. The food too bland. A bottle of whiskey was found half emptied nearby. And for Xixto María Martínez, all the signs were there. On this very day his contract was up. As for the brief poem found on his person, the paper offered no explanation, except to say: Mr. Martínez had a way with words. It was imminent now. Xixto dying the way he died was only a suggestion.
1. Consider what damages
Yes, light, pests, dirt, but also the whole climate, and pets and people. Don’t forget the stress of storage or display. Whether to be “used and enjoyed” or “saved and preserved” – you must decide. There is no quick or simple answer. I was given this, but how should I make sure it is safe? That it does not begin to decay, then all but disappear. There are basic measures that anyone can take. Preserving fibers will prolong life.
Ultraviolet light from the sun and fluorescent lights cause permanent damage. Be alert to how the sunlight might be reflecting off a wall or mirror.
My mother walked toward the courthouse at her usual fast clip, and the smoke from her Marlboro hung over her head. My brother Bernard and I trailed her as we crossed Church Street, and the fall leaves, mostly auburn and pumpkin, crunched under our feet. Everything else around us was so still.
Three weeks before, Mom had called me in the middle of the night to tell me that Bernard had been arrested. After we got off the phone, I wasn’t sure what to do. Even though Bernard was eighteen years old, only six years younger than I was, I had taken care of him his whole life. I had enjoyed his victories––homeruns and high scores––as if they were my own. I was sure his mistakes were mine, too.
Artist: LAURI LYONS
Curated by Alicia Lubowski-Jahn
Although the photographer Lauri Lyons calls New York home, she is ever on the move through her creative projects. Her current body of work spans Africa, Australia, Brazil, Mexico, Europe, and the United States, and has connected the globe through African diaspora and identity formation themes. Often pictures and languages within her portrait photography evoke origins that are both ancestral and geographic. She is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of the photojournalism magazine NOMADS, which is also dedicated to the peripatetic state.
CLMP & Huffington Post Books present ABC Trivia, co-hosted by One Story & Tin House, sponsored by The Common. Join us at 61 Local for a fun-filled evening of facts and prizes!
Image of craft beers at 61 Local via Flick Creative Commons user DowntownTraveler.com
I’m forty feet above the ground hanging, onto a palm frond for my life, and Batiota wants me to go higher. He motions for me to take my foot from the palm’s trunk and place it on the fronds above. I hesitate and give him a look that must be something between, What am I doing up here? and Why are you trying to kill me? Palm fronds grow green from the top, but whither and fall from below, so all I can see to step on is a dying frond, connected by nothing more than a thin, brown-red scar.
S. TREMAINE NELSON interviews AMY BRILL
Amy Brill’s articles, essays, and short stories have appeared or are forthcoming in One Story, Redbook, Real Simple, Salon, Guernica, and Time Out New York, among many others. Her debut novel The Movement of the Stars was published by Riverhead Books in April. This month she chatted with S. Tremaine Nelson about the island of Nantucket, historical fiction, and the first American female astronomer, Maria Mitchell, who shares characteristics with Hannah Price, the heroine of Brill’s novel.
S. Tremaine Nelson (SN): You were raised in New York City. Do you identify with a particular hometown neighborhood?
Amy Brill (AB): I strongly identify with the neighborhood I grew up in, Corona, Queens. It was like living in a mini UN, and it was the place I learned how to talk to anyone.
SN: What was the first book that made you say “wow!” out loud?
AB: I can’t remember the name — I was probably in third or fourth grade, and it was a YA book in which a young boy’s friend had died; I vaguely recall it being a case of playing on the train tracks, falling or being hit. What I do remember, vividly, is the gut-punch of the scene, how visceral my sorrow was for this fictional boy and his lost friend. It was the first time a book made me cry.
DIANA BABINEAU interviews TESS TAYLOR
Today we celebrate the publication of Tess Taylor’s The Forage House with two new poems from her debut collection (“Official History”, “Southampton County Will 1745”), complete with audio recordings. In the following interview with Diana Babineau, Taylor talks about personal ancestry, American roots, and slavery, as she attempts to uncover what remains of a broken past.
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