By CHRIS KELSEY
Often, Jim left for work at 5:30 am. I’d hear the old Volvo growl to life, struggle into the snowy lane, and twitter and squeal as it slowly picked up speed on the icy street going away.
The National Endowment for the Arts has awarded The Common a 2014 Art Works Grant in the magazine’s first year of eligibility.
ZINZI CLEMMONS interviews YVONNE ADHIAMBO OWUOR
Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor is the recipient of the 2003 Caine Prize for African Writing for her story “Weight of Whispers.” She is the author of the forthcoming novel, Dust (Knopf, January 2014), an excerpt of which was published in Issue No. 06 of The Common. While in South Africa Zinzi Clemmons talked with Kenyan-based Owuor about “deadlines as flexible soul mates,” lessons in artistic humility, consulting “the passing herdsmen” on the art of reading the landscape, and the up-and-coming literary world of Kenya.
Ground fog hovers out the back kitchen window, warm air over snow. We set out to walk before coffee. From the home of dear friends, we make our way down the dead-end road to the muddy grass path that leads us to the turn (right) down the rough-cleared way (duck under the fallen tree) to the fields owned by the nearby church and leased to the farmers. In a pair of borrowed rain boots and hooded sweatshirt (in late December), I feel a warm sweat rising.
Today we’re delighted to feature this close-up of a gorgeous recent acquisition by the Mead Art Museum at Amherst College.
Made in Italy of Carrara marble in the third quarter of the 2nd century CE, this ancient Roman sarcophagus features sea nymphs riding on the backs of sea centaurs while cupids fly overhead. It has “exceptional visual impact,” says Pamela Russell, the Mead’s head of education, “due to its impressive scale, lively marine subject, and pleasing symmetrical composition.”
By KURT CASWELL
After the wind, a man named Chuck died lying on the ice next to the fuel pump at the Phillips 66 off I-80 on the east side of Rawlins, Wyoming. I helped his friend lift him down from the passenger seat of the pickup, a big man, heavy and round, dressed in heavy Carhart work clothes against the cold. I gentled his head against my chest, holding him under the arms, a rag doll pulled down in the middle, my cheek so close to his, his little moustache, his hairy ears, his jowly neck. He was already dead, no pulse, no breath, his eyes gone out, but the 911 operator asked us to begin chest compressions.
Book by TIM Z. HERNANDEZ
Reviewed by
In October, 1947, Jack Kerouac met a pretty, young Mexican woman named Bea Franco on a bus going from Bakersfield to Los Angeles. She was fleeing an abusive husband; he was gathering notes for what would become On The Road, the defining book of the Beat Generation. For fifteen days, they stuck together, from the streets of East Los Angeles to the cotton and grape fields of California’s Central Valley. In his story, Kerouac devoted twenty-one pages to the affair.
Years later, still unable to find a publisher, Kerouac pitched his chapter about his adventures with Bea as a short story entitled “The Mexican Girl.” It appeared in the Winter, 1955 issue of The Paris Review. Soon after, On the Road was published, and Kerouac achieved overnight fame.
This is Part II of a two-part series. To read Part I, and an introduction to the work by Pascal Menoret, please click here.
The Colonel’s words weighed on Hisham’s mind. He became confused and hesitant again. This Colonel… He either was sincere and didn’t want to hurt Hisham, or was an expert in psychology. Hisham didn’t know. Could it be possible that all the prisoners were wrong about the Colonel’s intentions? Or was Hisham the naïve one? The Colonel fell silent as ‘Awadh brought tea and coffee. The Colonel lit another cigarette and took an audible slurp from the hot tea, followed by a sigh of pleasure.
Celebrate the year’s end with work by powerful younger poets new to our pages: R. A. Villanueva, James Byrne, and Nathaniel Bellows
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