The 26th Annual New York Book Show recognized The Common Issues 01 and 02, which won a second place literary magazine design award.
New York Book Show (2012)
April 3, 2012
News and Events
The Reluctant Traveler
April 1, 2012
Issue 03, Issue 03 Poetry, Poetry
By RACHEL HADAS
It seems I had to come this far to see
a puppy rooting in a pile of garbage,
scarlet blossoms on a poinsettia tree.
Swingin in the Attic
April 1, 2012
Issue 03, Issue 03 Poetry, Poetry
By RACHEL HADAS
In Richard’s attic, I
swung on a swing suspended from a rafter
and listened to two fables
read by my host in a voice that sometimes broke.
A Story with a Crack in It
April 1, 2012
Issue 03, Issue 03 Poetry, Poetry
By DENIS HIRSON
and it all begins
and it will never cease
—Mxolisi Nyezwa
This story begins on a lake in the Berkshires, up among the low hills and wild blue turkeys and deep woods, up in the northeast before you get to Canada. There I am with my daughter, pulling a rowing boat out across the sand and onto the weed-thick water.
At the Busy Intersection
April 1, 2012
Issue 03, Issue 03 Poetry, Poetry
When I saw the man tuck the boy
under his arm like a chicken
or a football, it made me
remember how after one week
of pre-season my youngest declared
his body was all wrong,
insufficient to take down boys
he needed taken down
Excerpts from the King
April 1, 2012
Issue 03, Issue 03 Poetry, Poetry
By BEN MAZER
xv
No mystery if the cats gather as this strange encounter
should have come to have emblematized the city:
for of all those who passed and paid homage to their peer
only you remained, after the room was clear.
October 29—The Dow Closes Down 11118
April 1, 2012
Issue 03, Issue 03 Poetry, Poetry
We want to remember
our dead, make an altar,
bring our daughter
to the photograph trace a chin
here, for good luck, palm
her grandmother’s hair,
she doesn’t know
who she is yet
May 17—The Down Closes Up 10625
April 1, 2012
Issue 03, Issue 03 Poetry, Poetry
Farid says he wants to be a family,
he adds, by which I mean I don’t want you to die.
May 5—The Dow Closes Down 8410
April 1, 2012
Issue 03, Issue 03 Poetry, Poetry
How did the fall begin? With touch? With naming? You were guidebook, misstep. You were hiking in Japan.
Occupation
April 1, 2012
Issue 03, Issue 03 Poetry, Poetry
I do not mean to lose the coast. But the fragrant wood of the skiff, shore whining with current, as though I could hear the coil of electric lines humming with speech, the slur of ordering—and in overhearing seek to follow, or move away from, bow knifing the water and splaying it from its back, sound retreating fathoms down from the oar’s dip and dip.
