News & Events | Page 49 | The Common | A Modern Sense of Place: Stories, Poems, Essays & Images

Reading the Ashes

October 31, 2022 Essays, Issue 24, Issue 24 Essays, Podcasts & Audio

The Common Magazine · “Reading The Ashes” by Robin Lee Carlson

I walk slowly, each step sinking a little into the ground. With every footfall, a puff of ash curls upward, dusting the top of my boot and disappearing into the soft stillness of the day. It is a clear day with no clouds, but the air around me has a gentle haze, a film that sometimes resolves into particles, pinpoints of ash in a slanting ray of sunlight. It has been two months since the fire, but the rising ash and the smell of smoke are strong, stinging the back of my throat and settling into a familiar ache in my temples.

Ode to Powerline

October 31, 2022 Issue 24, Issue 24 Poetry, Issues, Poetry

Winner of the 2022 DISQUIET Prize for Poetry

By DARIUS SIMPSON

“if you’re ever lonelayyyy, stop, you don’t have to be.”
—Powerline

you, thrust open leather vest glisten chest in the desert
you, both knee beggin in silver pants plus rain
you, break a lover wide to see what lyrics may flow

Bones and Ghosts

October 31, 2022 Issue 24, Issue 24 Poetry, Poetry

By DAVID MILLS

From my row house mailbox, I fished
an envelope: no address, just “David.”
scrawled. In my room, I read: e-mails

bounced back, calls orphaned. If you’re
alive and don’t want to talk I get it.
Though six hours across the Atlantic
is much farther than six along it. If
need be, I will kneel before your grave.
here’s my number. just in case.

Lions of the Church

October 31, 2022 Fiction, Issue 24, Issue 24 Fiction, Issues, Translation

By AHMED NAJI

Translated from the Arabic by BEN KOERBER

Antar Harami’s kingdom stretches from the iron bridge to the gristmills in the east, and from the El Gaz drainage canal southward all the way to the police checkpoint at the International Hospital.

Tsunami Bride

October 31, 2022 Fiction, Issue 24, Issue 24 Fiction, Issues

By SINDYA BHANOO

As the parakeet-green municipal bus pulled into Cuddalore, Sai held his sign up as high as he could, his forehead burning from the morning sun. He did not want the reporter to miss him.

The sign was flimsy, made of two pieces of printer paper taped together, but it was sufficient.

He’d written SARA, THE NEW YORK TIMES in thick capital letters with a black marker. He knew of only a handful of women doing serious journalism, mostly Barkha Dutt copycats. His favorite female journalist was actually a character from the movie Gandhi. He had rented it when he was in college in Chennai and watched it alone. He was instantly smitten with the actress who played the Time magazine photographer from America, charmed by the way her short, wavy hair bounced as she squatted to the ground to take pictures of the Mahatma spinning cotton on his chakkaram.

Charcoal

October 31, 2022 Issue 24, Issue 24 Poetry, Poetry

By TOMMYE BLOUNT

lit by her fire, I was the scorched
tree Clare West found

direction by; a swiftly drawn arrow
became a drawn hood; an era gone

Dream Catcher

October 31, 2022 Fiction, Issue 24, Issue 24 Fiction

By LOGAN LANE

FROM: Tracy Burks <dreamcatcher@archcorp.com>
TO: Office of Coordination <officeofcoordination@archcorp.com>
SUBJECT: How the Cookie Crumbles
DATE: August 3, 2043

FROM THE DESK OF TRACY BURKS

Dear Interns,

I will make this short but not sweet, unlike the chocolate delicacy at the center of this blunder:

Whoever is eating cookies in The Loomery, cease. Did you not see the signs in the hall outside? Did you not read the pamphlets on initiation day? Surely not, because you would’ve noticed they read in large Impact font: DO NOT EAT INSIDE THE LOOMERY.

Jerome Sons

October 31, 2022 Issue 24, Issue 24 Poetry, Poetry

By TERRI WITEK

I ask my sons what they want from St. Hieronymos, too old to befriend. Red hat, my dead son says. Fat book, my live son requests. No one mentions a lion, meandered in.

The lion asks for an edit= do these sons mark jars filled with body parts? Baboon son, jackal son? They flatten to black-rimmed eyes. No.

I climb through mountain sons. They are finding how far blue takes them. They are learning the ropy muscles of a man (higher animus/ they r anonymous) becalmed in a cave mouth. His red hat and book, the little fire.

A Wakened State

October 31, 2022 Issue 24, Issue 24 Poetry, Poetry, Poetry Recordings

By SARA MUNJACK

The Common Magazine · "A Wakened State" by Sara Munjack

Ascención

I’ve fallen into an ant pile.
I fight to stand up and shake off
a million legs whispering
across my skin.

I keep dreaming of Chon
before he was my grandfather. A boy
hiding in the desert for days surviving
on nopales y ardillas.

Maiden’s Tower

October 31, 2022 Issue 24, Issue 24 Poetry, Podcasts & Audio, Poetry, Poetry Recordings

By TARA SKURTU

The Common Magazine · “Maiden’s Tower” by Tara Skurtu

We pass a lighthouse and you tell me the legend—
a seer, an emperor, his daughter, the snakebite;
the tower he built to keep her at the edge of the sea—
when an old woman passes us on the ferry,
sniffs us twice, You are in love, I smelled it!
and last night on the island, over fresh fish
and a pitcher of ice-cloudy raki, I asked how
many words for love in your language: