Passages

By TEOW LIM GOH

Ten miles of concrete can bring you
to different places. Your feet carry you
across the ground, let you

into worlds unlike your own. You go places
you have never been. But what matters
is not where you have been

but what you see. What you choose
to see. Whether you let yourself
see the distance

between what is and what you want to be.

[Purchase Issue 15 here.]

Teow Lim Goh is the author of Islanders, a volume of poems on the history of Chinese exclusion at the Angel Island Immigration Station. Her work has been featured in Tin House, Catapult, PBS NewsHour, Colorado Public Radio, and The New Yorker. She lives in Denver.

From the beginning, The Common has brought you transportive writing and exciting new voices. We are committed to supporting writers and maintaining free, unrestricted access to our website, but we can’t do it without you. Become an integral part of our global community of readers and writers by donating today. No amount is too small. Thank you!

Passages

Related Posts

Hitting a Wall and Making a Door: A Conversation between Phillis Levin and Diane Mehta

DIANE MEHTA and PHILLIS LEVIN
This conversation took place over the course of weeks—over daily phone calls and long emails, meals when they were in the same place, and a weekend in the Connecticut countryside. The poets share what they draw from each other’s work, and the work of others, exploring the pleasures of language, geometric movement, and formal constraint.

Anna Malihot and Olena Jenning's headshots

August 2025 Poetry Feature: Anna Malihon, translated by Olena Jennings

ANNA MALIHON
The girl with a bullet in her stomach / runs across the highway to the forest / runs without saying goodbye / through the news, the noble mold of lofty speeches / through history, geography, / curfew, a day, a century / She is so young that the wind carries / her over the long boulevard between bridges

Image of a tomato seedling

Talks with the Besieged: Documentary Poetry from Occupied Ukraine  

ALEX AVERBUCH
Russians are already in Starobilsk / what nonsense / Dmytrovka and Zhukivka – who is there? / half a hundred bears went past in the / direction of Oleksiivka / write more clearly / what’s the situation in Novoaidar? / the bridge by café Natalie got blown up / according to unconfirmed reports