All posts tagged: 2023

A Good Girl in the People’s Republic

By LEI HU

A Good Girl

When she stepped outside and closed the door, the iron handle was so cold, it felt like it was burning. With the basket on her arm, Fu Rong slipped her hands into a pair of cotton mittens her mother had made. She knew she would warm up once she started walking. The stone lane in the village was slippery with ice; someone must have spilled water carrying it from the village well to their house. She slowed down and kept her pace steady, leaving the village behind her.

A Good Girl in the People’s Republic
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The Most-Read Pieces of 2023

As our new year of publishing and programming picks up speed, we at The Common wanted to reflect on the pieces that made last year such a great one! We published over 200 pieces online and in print in 2023. Below, you can browse a list of the six most-read pieces of 2023 to see which stories, essays, and poems left an impact on readers. 

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Two Poems from The Spring of Plagues by Ana Carolina Assis, translated by Heath Wing

bird on a branch

“i wish I could / prevent your death / and bury your body alive / in the puny damp / earth
we tended / so that it kept on living / mandioca corn banana / would not sprout forth / 
but instead / acerola cherry blackberry pitanga hog plum.” 

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January 2023 Poetry Feature, with work by Tina Cane, Myronn Hardy, and Marc Vincenz

Purple flowers close up 
“Sheila had IHOP     delivered to her apartment     in El Alto, NY    / on January 6th    
so she could kick back     self-proclaimed terrorist     / that she is     and eat pancakes
     while watching white supremacists / storm the Capital.”

Read more. 



The Story of A Box by Jeffrey Harrison 

box with art on the inside   
“Duchamp gave my grandparents the Boîte-en-valise in the early 1960s. It was one of many handmade boxes Duchamp created containing miniature versions of his paintings and other works. This item… might have been the most intriguing to my siblings and me.”

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Dispatch from Moscow, Idaho by Afton Montgomery

Moscow Idaho plain    
“The neighbor children are in the Evangelical cult that Vice and The Guardian wrote about last year. They’re not allowed to speak to us, which is a thing no one has ever said aloud but is true, nonetheless. This town is full of true things that no one says aloud.”

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Five Poems by Serbian Poet Milena Marković, translated by Steven and Maja Teref

clothes hanging on a line in front of yellow building 
“the girl isn’t wearing warm socks / some men catcall her at the bus station / she pretends not to hear them / the barking dog chases the escaping sun / there used to be a landfill / behind the supermarket / black birds used to have lunch / and even dinner there.” 

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Farmworker Poetry Feature, with work by Rodney Gomez

eye of a hurricane

“If I sang I was sinful, I was animal. Stole sips from circumscribed fountains.
I said murciélago, my knuckles drew a ruler. I said San Judas, my arm was viced.
Survived by christening the bruise a train track.”

Read more. 

 


 

Thanks for a great year! We are excited to continue sharing work by writers all over the world with you in 2024. Keep up with the art, prose, and poetry we publish each week by subscribing to our newsletter

The Most-Read Pieces of 2023
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Podcast: Leo Ríos on “Lencho”

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Transcript: Leo Ríos

 
Leo Ríos speaks to managing editor Emily Everett about his story “Lencho,” which appears in The Common’s most recent issue, in a portfolio from the immigrant farmworker community. Leo talks about the process of writing and revising this story, which explores the friendship between two high school seniors in a rural community in California’s Central Valley. Leo also discusses his family’s generations-long history in farm labor, and how a class on reading poetry made him rethink prose writing on the sentence level.

headshot of leo rios next to issue 26 cover

Podcast: Leo Ríos on “Lencho”
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Podcast: Vix Gutierrez on “Don’t Step Off the Path”

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Listen on Spotify.

 

Transcript: Vix Gutierrez

Vix Gutierrez speaks to managing editor Emily Everett about her essay “Don’t Step Off the Path,” which appears in The Common’s most recent issue. Vix talks about writing this essay, a coming of age story about her teenage years spent in the Balkans immediately after the Yugoslav Wars, where she lived with a very small humanitarian aid organization. The essay is a fascinating look at a rarely-explored moment in time, and probes the doubts, dangers, and power that come from being a young woman in a postwar landscape of men. Vix also discusses her formative time spent at the DISQUIET International Program in Lisbon, Portugal, and in the MFA program at the University of Florida.

portrait of vix gutierrez

Podcast: Vix Gutierrez on “Don’t Step Off the Path”
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Review: Landscapes

By CHRISTINE LAI
Reviewed by S. ELIZABETH SIGLER 

Cover of "Landscapes" by Christine Lai
The walls of the art gallery behind the rotunda are lined with large paintings of gods and goddesses that loom above the viewer, giving the sense that the mythological figures are larger than life. On its own wall—separate from its goddess-themed counterparts—is an 1817 oil painting by Jacques-Louis David. “Cupid and Psyche” is an arresting image that shows a teenage Cupid smirking at viewers—like he’s letting them in on a joke—as he tosses an arm over Psyche. Both of the painting’s subjects are fully naked. Psyche is asleep, so the viewer can only guess how she would feel if she were to realize how Cupid is showing off his “sexual conquest” by slinging his arm between her breasts. 
Review: Landscapes
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Belleville

By NANCY LEFENFELD

But after the divorce, he moved back to Belleville. To his old neighborhood, the neighborhood of his youth.

His wife—now ex-wife—hated Belleville. It reminded her of the poor Polish girl she had been. All the years they were together, they lived in Boulogne-Billancourt.

He has a small apartment on the rue du Jourdain. It’s just a few steps from the tabac where he used to buy cigarettes for his father. And it’s practically around the corner from the primary school he attended, on the rue Olivier Métra.

Belleville
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Two Poems by David M. Brunson

By DAVID M. BRUNSON

 
Skyline of Santiago, Chile

 

Vertigo

Santiago, Chile

For over a month now, my wife and I have dangled extension cords
from our 26th-floor balcony to the neighbors’ apartment

because their landlord collects rent but refuses to pay the utility monopoly.
The girls cry when we have to disconnect, but we’ll be gone for a while,

plus there’s a chance of rain, and therefore, an electrical fire
in our 1000-person highrise. We saw one just last week. The all-volunteer

Two Poems by David M. Brunson
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