![[No one can take my anger]](https://thecommononline.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/1419132290_c90a4c34e3_b.jpg)
not even you who caused it.
& no one can take my madness
not even my honied friends
who try to pull me back from
the edge of myself, who update
each other in the groupchat
of how my body is wasting
for Ange Mlinko
Of C. H. Krumm—Charles Harrison, or Harry—
a single trace remains on Catalina,
so oxidized, so salt-worn I could barely
make out the name. How many must have seen it
while rambling from or trudging to the ferry
and given it no mind, no second look?
Excerpted from Fairfield County
When asked what number Pal O Mine should run under, Moses had said, “Number seven or number three. Them’s divine numbers, alright. God made this whole world in seven days. And He’s a trinity: Father, Son, Holy Ghost. Cain’t go wrong with three neither.”
It wasn’t often that a Negro at the racetrack was asked his opinion such as this, but Moses was respected by the horse’s owner, so when it came time to prepare for the 1938 Carolina Jessamine Invitational, Mrs. Pynchon-Grant went right up to Moses and told him to pick the number.
The number seven would have put the stallion too far right of the field and closer to the stands of crowds, and so would have caused further distraction that would have leaked through Pal’s blinders and earplugs. That far out in the field and the thunder of the spectator’s cheers would drown out the footfalls of Pal’s competitors, and so the number three would put the colt closer to the center of action and increase the odds of victory—should he be able to run.
consider articulation, both speech
and the assembly of a joint,
the cooperation of bones and
marijuana; English: Mary Jane:
shoe, or the talentless friend you
secretly love who is also the pretty,
skirted woman in Spiderman who
The dog is crossing a circle. Dawn light catching silver strands on a gray coat, saliva on a panting tongue, a red collar. A lost dog.
For an instant, we lock eyes, then I continue around and take the north exit. I’m in a hurry to get to the meet-up point. My first time running with others and I’m dreading it, but doctor’s orders and all that. Besides, I’ve promised my husband. I will be late, I will be late, I will be late, I say through my teeth, then pull over to look for the dog.
Despite the brief streaks of self-
belief, a stubborn defeat pervades.
Absent a job, absent a title.
I want to declare: a great undoing has taken place.
And I don’t know where to search for the bricks
that once made up the house of who I used to be.
![In Place of River I’ll Use [God]](https://thecommononline.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Ezza-Ahmed.jpg)
By EZZA AHMED
Ten days behind my tongue
summer in the diasporic,
riding thick in the smell of [God]
and fresh cloves.
By [God] I mean the monsoon season
where water appeared in snake-like streams
erasing all traces of my
present tense.
By EMILY NEMENS
She was running along the Manhattan side of the East River—this was in the bucolic “before” times, prior to when the city tore up the East Village’s riverside park, chucking its eighty-year-old trees and modernist amphitheater and ebullient perennial flower beds in the name of future flood mitigation—when she felt a curtain being snapped up the back of her left calf, krrrrrik! More lightning than pain. At first. Then, it became very painful. A hot pain that ran an invisible line down the meat of her calf, like those sexy stockings with seams, but the seams had turned carnivorous and were nibbling at her flesh with tiny razor teeth. Running farther, even slow-jogging the 1.3 miles home, was out of the question (her mental math: more pain multiplied by less time in transit, or less pain times more minutes; the latter had the lower sum), so she slowly limped back from the river, putting as little weight on her left foot as possible. She wondered what she would do.
By EZZA AMHED
Because I didn’t say Mashallah when she swapped her nose stud for a hoop and two days later I’m met by the bursting bulb of blood and pus which seals the fibrous innards of her nose cartilage on the outside sits the bulb pulsing expanding as if it’s breathing looks like a red evil eye ornament white pupil right at the center she has a nose growing out of her nose
By RACHEL HADAS
The old woman with the art
paces through her silent rooms,
sunlight reflecting off the frames.
Adult children live downstairs
in the basement. Whose is the art?
Is it the world’s or hers or theirs?
Don’t miss an issue! Subscribe to The Common.