Whirling axis, spine of a spinning top. Love
between us all maybe and blush. Night we press
against us, secret we caress, word we write in steam
Translated from the Italian by LAURA MASINI and LINDA WORRELL
“I am living permanently in my dream,
from which I make brief forays into reality.”
—Ingmar Bergman, The Magic Lantern: An Autobiography
Erminia danced the Charleston. My friend Gianluca told me how, almost every evening, his grandmother would pause on the threshold of the French doors that opened onto the terrace and trace out the steps. Her arms swinging, legs twisting, a toe to the front, then to the back, a heel swiveling to the side, a toe to the front again. She confined her movements to the doorway as though she wanted to go unnoticed, and yet somehow she demanded the attention of anyone nearby. Whenever I was at Gianluca’s, I always saw her singing softly to herself.
![[ Heart Fragments ]](https://thecommononline.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/49748876496_8df6a7f7a3_o.png)
When you touch me I light up into funereal pyre. In the consummation, by char and carbon, brittle is not my name. I tongue flame and soot and singe. Fire to our forests, fuel for restless fires. Fantastical firebrands undergoing scorching metamorphoses. Oh, love, ether.
We called him Ísjaki. Few knew his real name. I certainly didn’t when I was charged with being his caretaker during his first visit to New York. Ísjaki meant “iceberg” in Iceland, where this man came from.
I could tell you,
If I wanted to,
What makes me
What I am.
But I don’t
Really want to—
And you don’t
Give a damn.
—Langston Hughes, “Impasse”
There are two cops from the Orange County Sheriff’s Department standing in my grandmother’s kitchen. We are all gathered around the kitchen island silently negotiating the power dynamics. Two Black women, two White cops. The cops have come to collect the details for the report, but I’m doing most of the talking. Grammy bears witness.
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.
Winner of the 2022 DISQUIET Prize for Poetry
“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
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.
By AHMED NAJI
Translated from the Arabic by BEN KOERBER
1
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.
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.
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Celebrating 15 Years