#giftinspo for Cottagecore Girls
—Dispatch from Santa Clarita, California,
nowhere near a cozy forest cottage, August, 2025
Nose heavenward, ears like capsized canoes,
I unbox a silver-gray rabbit, painted to look
metal and heavy. My new useless
bookend. Plastic. Stiff and unsteady—
I would have missed it on a shelf, out shopping
like people used to do, maybe held its weight
Photo by Hannah Stone
Cape May, NJ
Some things we understand before we’ve ever touched them. I swallowed a poppyseed and saw you in my dreams. Summer sweltered. Sweat marked round my ribs, beating with two hearts. Boiled eggs, sharp chives, mayo, cayenne, dill, salt. Summer of salt: we retreat to the seaside of my childhood, rocky and full of my mother’s egg salad.
By ALEX BEHM
Copenhagen, Denmark
My grandfather sits in a recliner and watches infomercials on television. It is 2:57 in the afternoon on an American Sunday and a man wearing a cheap suit tries selling him the New King James Version Bible in twelve parts on CD.
I call from Copenhagen where the time is 8:57pm and the sun has already set. An electronic operator speaks words in Danish I cannot decipher before the static spindles through air and across several oceans until my grandfather picks up his landline.
Harmony Presbyterian Church, he says into the phone. This is his greeting. No Hello or Can I help you? He has no caller ID and does this to defend himself against telemarketers. He tells me, If you answer with the name of a church, they are not allowed to sell you anything, and then purses his lips and nods his head one time, each time he says this.
2025 was a momentous year for The Common: our fifteenth anniversary, our 30th issue, even a major motion picture based on a story in the magazine. We’re more grateful than ever for our readers, contributors, donors, and friends.
Before we close out this busy year of publishing, we wanted to take a moment to reflect on the unique, resonant, and transporting pieces that made 2025 memorable. The Common published 269 contributors this year. Below, you can browse a list of the ten most-read new pieces of 2025 to get a taste of what left an impact on readers.
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Candy and Layer Cake: Zack Strait in Conversation with Richard Siken (and Five Poems)
“The whole world seemed like a five-paragraph essay but poetry rubbed against that. It was contrary and rebellious. That summer it rained a lot, and hard. We had a 100-year flood. It washed out bridges. I saw a house on the edge of a swollen wash lose its backyard and then get swept away. I didn’t want to talk about it, I wanted to make somebody feel it. I started writing every day. I was very bad at it. ”
—Richard Siken
By ALAA ALQAISI
Gaza, Palestine
We stepped out with our eyes uncovered.
Gaza kept looking through them—
green tanks asleep on roofs, a stubborn gull,
water heavy with scales at dawn.
Nothing in us chose the hinges to slacken.
The latch turned without our hands.
Papers practiced the border’s breath.
On the bus, the glass held us—
a pond that would not name who stays.
By JULIA TOLO
Søgne, Norway, July 8, 2018
Sitting around the white painted wood and metal table
that hosted the best dinners of my childhood
my uncle is sharing
his many theories of the world
the complexities of his thoughts are
reserved for Norwegian, with some words here and there
to keep his English-speaking audience engaged
I don’t translate, don’t want to
repeat those thoughts
in any language
but we have a nice time
there’s a cheesecake with macerated peaches
and mint
the sun is low and through the window to my grandma’s house
the heavy lace curtains are catching the light
By TOLA SYLVAN
Photo courtesy of author
Hida Furukawa, Japan 2025
I
I make a list of some observations:
the baby’s cheek, below it
spidery veins like a leaf
stalk of tempura (crab or shrimp? something pink)
pale yellow like a new bud in spring
Photo courtesy of author
Red Lake, Croatia
“Why are they so persistent in trying to explore the unknowable?”
~Comment from a villager, following the latest Red Lake expedition
By LIZA KATZ DUNCAN
The Jersey Shore, NJ, USA
During the Drought
During the drought, we traded water
for wine. Let our plants wither, stopped
doing laundry. Learned to shudder
at the smell of fire. Hoped
it was just some asshole with a chiminea. Every
impostor cloud was suspect: steam rising
By BEN TAMBURRI
Photo courtesy of author
Baileys Harbor, WI
Baileys Harbor has always felt like a place that is eternally old, eternally in the past. It is a destination for quiet summers on the Wisconsin peninsula, where the insignia of range lights and lighthouses decorate the bathroom of every home, and Dala horses wreath the doors. It was the place of my youth, even if it was only for a week each year. As a kid, when my family visited, I felt at home among the retired condo-dwellers.
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