January Gill ONeil | The Common

Sunnyside

April 22, 2024 Issue 27, Issue 27 Poetry, Poetry

—for Joseph O. Legaspi

And when you whispered under your mask, I don’t think I can stand these two young lovers, bright as the low winter sun shining through the dingy subway car windows, I knew what you meant: maskless, giggling, boy holding girl by the waist, taking selfies on a gray seat made for two. We sat across, letting their tenderness reflect on us: her back to his chest making a hearth of their bodies while the train snakes its turn over the elevated tracks. Hi-rises loom over gentrified streets, the graffitied walls, a sign for $0.99 pizza—how old neighborhoods create a new belonging. Nothing jostles these two as they attend to their own happiness, not the train’s hard lurch, its rumble and squeal, this couple at the beginning of their desires, you turning to me with your brown eyes in the day’s last light as we approach our final stop.

Nothing You Expect: Joseph O. Legaspi Interviews January Gill O’Neil

January 8, 2024 Interviews

JANUARY GILL O’NEIL and JOSEPH O. LEGASPI have been friends for almost three decades, since the mid-90s, when they met at orientation in the beat-up lounge of New York University’s creative writing program. The two simply hit it off, bonded over brie, and shared poetics, both starry-eyed on their first venture into New York City.

January is the author of the newly minted collection, Glitter Road, her fourth book published by CavanKerry Press. Her previous titles are Underlife, Misery Islands and Rewilding. She is associate professor at Salem State University and currently serves as board chair of the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP). The interview was conducted over Zoom in December 2023. Full transparency: Joseph traveled to visit January outside of Boston for a weekend in September, braving a storm that drenched New York City, and arriving three hours late. But instead of “getting to work,” they hung out as good friends do and enjoyed each other’s company, relishing in nourishment, and sustenance.

May 2023 Poetry Feature: New Poems by Our Contributors

May 25, 2023 Poetry

New poems by TIMOTHY DONNELLY, JANUARY GILL O’NEIL, and NGUYEN BINH

Table of Contents:
—Timothy Donnelly, “Eglantine” and “Mill”
—January Gill O’Neil, “Us”
—Nguyen Binh, “Two of the Graves by the Highway” and “Uncle”

Eglantine
By Timothy Donnelly

after Marceline Desbordes-Valmore

Thorn-blossom! Tender thing, prone to solitude
like yours truly, don’t get it twisted if I reach out my hand—
it isn’t to pluck you, who are my beacon down this path, but a gesture
of acknowledgment common among my kind.