Issue 23 | Page 2 | The Common

The Woman in the Well

May 2, 2022 Essays, Issue 23, Issue 23 Essays

For nearly two years of my life, I lived with a ghost. It was when my father, a civil servant, was posted in Sambalpur, a now forgotten town in northern Odisha, a state in India’s east. Newspapers then, and even now, always added the descriptor “India’s poorest state” whenever Odisha made the headlines. This happened in the late 1980s, when several hunger-related deaths were reported in a tribal-dominated district in the state’s west, and a decade later, after an Australian missionary was burnt to death, along with his two sons, by a group led by a Hindu fanatic.

Side Mirror

May 2, 2022 Issue 23, Issue 23 Poetry, Poetry

J.D. SCRIMGEOUR

You’re trying to reattach your car’s side mirror
but your ungloved fingers can’t remove
the protective strip from the two-sided tape,
and the mid-morning sun angles into your eyes

as you try to align and fasten the plastic clips.
You’re floundering in flashes of light and dark,
so after a few minutes you scoot inside
because January’s cold, and ask your wife for help,

A Rage on Berbice, 1763

May 2, 2022 Issue 23, Issue 23 Poetry, Poetry

By LYNNE THOMPSON

Before I was north and south of a new country
I was divided from I was a tactic I was
a slave-trading port

Of Prayers and Orisons

May 2, 2022 Issue 23, Issue 23 Poetry, Poetry

By BENJAMIN PALOFF

It has become the first ritual of morning to throw the door open, welcoming the breeze now free of evening’s biting insects, another in a long line of self-justifications: it will arrive whether it’s welcome or not. As will the birds, who know when you breakfast and on what, who are generous with suggestions, whether here, in your dishabille, or at the seasonal cafe, in not much else. There is a three-sided varnished pine box with a plexiglass front, like a bird feeder or diorama or, in traditions less eager to let go or get rid, a coffin, scale being trivial to all species but those least likely to accept it, though the slot on top and slips of paper on display suggest a raffle or ballot, a variation on a theme performed in a tiny theater, and the blanks and golf pencil at the side are, in combination and without need to announce itself with embossed lettering or miniature reply envelope—scale, again—an invitation. At this suggestion, you suggest: The history of our times betrays the stupid arrogance of this and so many other definite articles, symptomatic of these times and others. It might be noticed and echoed and yet go unchallenged on social media, but here it could ignite a sudden change, a contemplative pleasure, and be forgotten all in the span of a few moments, like rain in the green season. It means something to us, this refusal to admit our visceral understanding of the unity of space and time, when, honestly, we know them in no other way. Whereas your ruminations on what memory means to the birds have proven inconclusive. Like you, they’re as routinized in their offices as offices. Like you, they celebrate the light that breaks the rain, throughout the day and without memory, as the arrival of a god.

Landscape with Cheetah Going Seventy in the Serengeti

May 2, 2022 Issue 23, Issue 23 Poetry, Poetry

By DAVID HERNANDEZ

That’s what that russet brushstroke is
below the skyline—her spots
lost in the open plains. That’s hunger
that blurs her. We cannot see
what she is chasing, but we can
imagine it. Zebra. Gazelle. Impala.
Antelope. The eyes of the animal
large in its sockets. I like that lone
acacia tree back there—it has this
bonsai spirit to it. This calm.
And the trio of almost imperceivable
stars in the upper corner, those light
pink grains, which remind me we are
also traveling quick around the sun—
957 times faster than this cheetah,
not to mention the speed of the sun
inside the Milky Way, and the Milky Way
through cold, dark, soundless space—
1.3 million mph, last time I checked.
Astronomers and physicists did
the math for us, but little did they know
what it would do to human minds
or hearts—mine is going
pretty fast now, just thinking about
our velocity, our spiraling out.
Here, place your palm against it.
Over my sticker that says Visitor.

On Foot

May 2, 2022 Issue 23, Issue 23 Poetry, Poetry, Poetry Recordings

By DIANE THIEL

The Common Magazine · “On Foot” by Diane Thiel

(after a line by Edith Södergran)

On foot, I had to cross the galaxy.
I left without luggage or gear, knowing
nothing I had would be of use out there.

Mosaic School

May 2, 2022 Issue 23, Issue 23 Poetry, Poetry

By JOHN POCH

The youngest deconstructionists among us
are proud at first to spend their days breaking up
great slabs of fired tile every shade of wine
while the masters climb the scaffolds
with their gold pride, their gilt, reaching for
a sandal buckle or the heights of a halo.

In Which Raging Weather is a Gift

May 2, 2022 Issue 23, Issue 23 Poetry, Poetry

By ELLEN DORÉ WATSON

The Common Magazine · “In Which Raging Weather Is A Gift” by Ellen Dore Watson

Despite barriers of rat screen, parge, and tar,
despite blustering wind in the chimney,
I think I hear something setting up house
in the cellar. It’s a night to come in