2015 | Page 17 | The Common

Leaving Walter

April 1, 2015 Fiction, Issue 09, Issue 09 Fiction

“Tell me what you want, Aaron,” Walter had periodically insisted, the words no longer an invitation but a way of chiding Aaron, suggesting that he wanted too much—or worse, that he had no idea what he wanted. In the beginning of their lives together, when they were two discrete people, Walter’s motives felt easy to read.

: Tell me who you are, he seemed to be saying. Tell me what you want from this life. Only later had Aaron understood that his real motive in asking was to discover how he might serve as benefactor to Aaron’s wishes and ambitions and, in doing so, bind Aaron to him.

God’s Fingernail

April 1, 2015 Fiction, Issue 09, Issue 09 Fiction

By MASHA HAMILTON

He brought her stories, long and intricate narratives that he laid at her feet like a dog with a bone. She would have preferred love, or at least more of his wild, open-hearted sex, but that was complicated; after all, she lived in another time zone now, and the divorce, far beyond messy, had left him in debt. For weeks, he’d camped out in his friend’s van—demoralizing for a middle-aged man. He had an apartment on the third floor in what she knew was a rough neighborhood, backing up against the desert. He had a son also, and that’s where his energy needed to go. Stories were what he could manage for her.

Between the Lines

April 1, 2015 Fiction, Issue 09, Issue 09 Fiction

By SUJATA SHEKAR

The morning of the announcement, Bo Htet Aung finished his story. He wrote The End at the bottom of the page, shut the notebook, and slipped it into the briefcase he took to work each day. Then he set about ironing a white shirt and blue longyi with more than his usual precision. He wished he could wear his old major’s uniform, with its crisp olive lines and the peaked cap that added two inches to his height. But it was not that kind of day, that kind of announcement. Instead he pulled his traditional taikpon jacket on over his shirt and left it unbuttoned. His fingers shook too much.

Poetry Month: Emily Dickinson Cartoon

April 1, 2015 Studio

By ROSANNA BRUNO

April is POETRY MONTH, and we’re kicking it off with a satirical cartoon of local poet Emily Dickinson: girl voted most likely to dwell in possibility…

Get into the spirit of POETRY MONTH with this satirical cartoon of Emily Dickinson, who reminds us to be wary when travelling…

Rosanna Bruno is a visual artist who lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

2125 Stanley Street Dance Performance

April 1, 2015 News and Events

Event Date:

Tuesday, April 7, 2015 – 8:00pm

Location:

Webster Hall, Studio 2, Amherst College

Dante Or, The End of Poetry

April 1, 2015 Issue 09, Issue 09 Poetry, Poetry

By PATRICK PRITCHETT

for Raul Zurita

And he stirred his coffee, the old poet, and spoke of
Dante, and how Homer’s journey to the underworld
wove a thread through Virgil to the selva oscura. And
that the Commedia was not the apex of Christianity, but
its finale. That the enormous architecture of the poem
was not built to house theology, but to protect man from
the absence of God, who had already departed.

Hellgrammite Cloud

April 1, 2015 Issue 09, Issue 09 Poetry, Podcasts & Audio, Poetry

By GARY METRAS

A cloud drifting over the house tonight
is the shape of an insect, a hellgrammite,
large, long, and singular, crawling through
the waters of dark sky.

Postcolonial Chicken

April 1, 2015 Issue 09, Issue 09 Poetry, Podcasts & Audio, Poetry

By JOHN MATTHIAS

1. Texts

“When he brought the chicken into the hotel lobby he became embarrassed, not wanting the staff to see, so he stuffed it inside double-breasted serge and went up in the lift reeking of spit-roast.”

—Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses