All posts tagged: Kwame Opoku-Duku

The Most-Read Pieces of 2024

Before we close out another busy year of publishing, we wanted to take a moment to reflect on the unique, resonant, and transporting pieces that made 2024 memorable. The Common published over 175 stories, essays, poems, interviews, and features online and in print in 2024. Below, you can browse a list of the ten most-read pieces of 2024 to get a taste of what left an impact on readers.

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January 2024 Poetry Feature: Part I, with work by Adrienne Su, Eleanor Stanford, Kwame Opoku-Duku, and William Fargason

“I wrote this poem on Holy Saturday, which historically is the day after Jesus was crucified, and the day before he was resurrected. That Spring, I was barely out of a nervous breakdown in which I had intense suicidal ideation … The moments of quiet during a time like that take on more meaning somehow, reminders I was still alive. And that day, that Saturday, I saw a bee.”

—William Fargason on “Holy Saturday”

The Most-Read Pieces of 2024
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Prelude

By KWAME OPOKU-DUKU

Was it all simply adornment,
watching the rain fall from the sun, 
or the mourning dove that carried
the wallet-sized photo in its beak?
Looking back, it was true—
I had stopped seeing the beauty in it all,
living from moment to moment, 
looking to be granted some small sense 
of pleasure, as if by respite or charity.

Prelude
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January 2024 Poetry Feature: Part I

New poems by ADRIENNE SU, ELEANOR STANFORD, KWAME OPOKU-DUKU, and WILLIAM FARGASON

Table of Contents:

  • Adrienne Su, “Solitude”
  • Eleanor Stanford, “Lover, before the pandemic”
  • Kwame Opoku-Duku, “Glory”
  • William Fargason, “Holy Saturday”

 

Solitude
By Adrienne Su

My body rebelled
against the amorphousness
of American

motherhood, which asked
me to be available
as if I were five

women: two grandmas,

January 2024 Poetry Feature: Part I
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