Poetry | The Common

Podcast: Lauren Delapenha on “Supermarketing”

August 14, 2026 Audio, Issue 31, Podcast, Podcasts & Audio

LAUREN DELAPENHA speaks to EMILY EVERETT about her poems “Supermarketing” and “If You Are Learning English,” which appear in The Common’s spring issue. Lauren also discusses her process and revision methods, her time at the Disquiet Literary Program in Lisbon, and how balancing both teaching and writing challenges her.

Lauren is a Jamaican poet and English teacher. She earned her master’s in creative writing from the University of Oxford, and her work has received an Oxbelly Fellowship, a Helen Zell and Jamaica Poet Laureate’s Young Writers Prize for Poetry, a Grindstone International Poetry Prize, and two Pushcart nominations. She currently lives and teaches in Connecticut.

Read Lauren’s poems in The Common at thecommononline.org/tag/Lauren-Delapenha.

Learn more about her work at laurendelapenha.com.

The Common is a print and online literary magazine publishing stories, essays, and poems that deepen our collective sense of place. On our podcast and in our pages, The Common features established and emerging writers from around the world. Read more and subscribe to the magazine at thecommononline.org, and follow us on Instagram, Bluesky, and Facebook.

Emily Everett is managing editor of the magazine and host of the podcast. In 2025 her debut novel All That Life Can Afford was a Reese’s Book Club pick, and her work appeared in The New York Times Modern Love column. Previous publications include the Kenyon Review, Electric Literature, Tin House, and Mississippi Review. She was a 2022 Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellow in Fiction.

July 2026 Poetry Feature

July 30, 2026 Poetry

New poems from AMIYA MORETTA, EMILY MARIE PASSOS DUFFY, JOSE HERNANDEZ DIAZ, and JOHN KINSELLA.

Table of Contents:

Amiya Moretta, “Magnolia Prophets”
Emily Marie Passos Duffy, “Corpus Luteum”
Jose Hernandez Diaz, “Ode to Chicken Quesadillas”
John Kinsella, “Limbo Sub-canto 4” and “Story of the Sparks”

Self-Portrait in The Caribbean

July 9, 2026 Poetry, Translation

By PAOLA ASSAD BARBARINO
Translated by MAGDALENA ARIAS VÁSQUEZ

Poems appear below in English and the original Spanish.

Translator’s Note:
Paola’s poetry, which I have been translating for a while now, is fundamentally Venezuelan and has to be understood in that context. The challenge for me is to render this context as best as I can from my position as an outsider. “Autorretrato en el caribe” or “Self-Portrait in the Caribbean” was a particularly challenging poem to translate keeping this in mind. It’s also one of my favorites of hers. It relies heavily on Venezuelan history and an understanding of their political context. The most prevalent example of this is the quotation, “¡Entonces yo tampoco quiero mando!” which is a historical allusion to Capitán Emparán, who, in the face of the Spanish crown’s decaying power in Venezuela, famously used the words to renounce his position in government, granting Venezuela independence from Spain. It directly translates to “Then I too do not want to be led” or “Then I too do not want to lead.” The double sense of the phrase in Spanish is particularly interesting in the context of the poem. I chose to keep it in Spanish to keep this double meaning, and also to assert the phrase’s origin as Venezuelan, whose context may not be readily available to an Anglophone reader. The final stanza of the poem is one of my favorite lines that Paola has ever written. Speaking from the position of someone living through exile, Paola’s poetry is politically and personally charged and speaks to the complicated space she inhabits.

Feltspade

June 11, 2026 Poetry, Translation

Poem by ELIAS SADAQ, translated from the Danish by DENVER DAVID ROBINSON.
The piece appears in both English and Danish below.

Translator’s Note

I bought a copy of Elias Sadaq’s debut poetry collection DJINN on a windy December morning in Copenhagen in 2024. Although I’m not Danish, Moroccan, or Muslim, I’ve spent over half my life going between the United States and a small seaside village in Denmark not so far―in kilometers―from where Sadaq grew up. I was curious to know what it’s like to be of Danish and Moroccan descent, queer and Muslim, and come from one of (highly homogenous) Denmark’s most ethnically diverse districts, a place I had visited occasionally with my father. Sadaq’s work enchanted me immediately. There was much I recognized, and more I did not, including incantations to punish and protect. As I read, I scribbled a rudimentary translation in pencil next to his lines. Eventually, I reached out to Sadaq, who gave me permission to translate and seek American publishers for his work. Now, after several months of collaboration and getting to know one another, I have finished my translation of DJINN. I’ve learned so much in my work with Elias, who is one of Denmark’s most versatile and exciting new artists. For one, my understanding of modern street Danish has improved. More importantly, his generosity and playful curiosity have inspired me in this time of increasing discord. His work opens doors, welcoming all who care or clamor to enter―strangers, DILFs, saints, and demons―while narrowing the gap between the sacred and profane.

A felt spade is a military entrenching tool, a survival shovel, but also carries a derogatory connotation employed to infer one is an idiot. I considered translating the title with an English colloquial equivalent, such as blunt instrument, dull blade, or simply tool. In the end, I chose to keep the literal translation to allow readers to sit with the original title’s ambiguity.

― Denver David Robinson

Mother is a Kind of Holding: Jenny Qi interviews Preeti Vangani

June 8, 2026 Interviews

PREETI VANGANI and JENNY QI first met as inaugural Rooted and Written Fellows at the San Francisco Writers Grotto in 2019, the same year that Preeti published her debut poetry collection, Mother Tongue Apologize. Their shared experience of writing through grief after mother-loss as young women bonded them, and they became close friends. Both were subsequently awarded a Brown Handler Residency and a McCormack Writing Center Fellowship (formerly Tin House).

May 2026 Poetry Feature: Arielle Hebert, from Bottom Feeders

May 28, 2026 Poetry

This month we bring you three poems selected from Bottom Feeders by ARIELLE HEBERT, forthcoming from Black Lawrence Press.

TOC:
—“Elegy for Florida”
—“Red Tide”
—“The Dead Layer”

Elegy for Florida

Almost everything they said about her was true.
Even the bad things.
Especially the bad things.

She began reaching for the water
and never stopped reaching
until she became
an extension of water itself,
her delicate arm just begging
to be snapped off from the panhandle.

The Grave Fox

April 24, 2026 Issue 31, Issue 31 Poetry, Poetry

By DANIEL TOBIN

Like a dog truant among the tended plots
it turns back toward us a considerate eye
as though sensing the disquiet of our being

lost here among all the unfamiliar graves
that would be landmarks proving the right way
if this were the way we’d believed it to be.

Supermarketing

April 24, 2026 Issue 31, Issue 31 Poetry, Poetry

By LAUREN DELAPENHA

The miracle of the chain:
here, you could be anywhere

and still find the same winter tomatoes
(Greece, California, Spain),

Jesus’ Body Found Outside Ice Cream Parlor in Black Suburb

April 24, 2026 Issue 31, Issue 31 Poetry, Poetry

By STEFAN BINDLEY-TAYLOR

His left wrist dangled out the half-wound-down glass of a boxy brown Cadillac with red felt seats. Flies drifted in and out. He had a dip top cone in his hand. The place was famous for them. You’d think it would be melting in the heat, but the molten chocolate shell held the ice cream within firm and cold. The air reeked of gasoline. No one had thought to turn the engine off.

Nocturne for Dark Things

April 24, 2026 Issue 31, Issue 31 Poetry, Poetry

By AIMEE NEZHUKUMATATHIL

I do my finest listening in the dark.
My best friend has always been ink
and she lets me talk so much at night.

One of the marvels of my life—
an alphabet. A whole green and mossy
world can be made and remade

from just twenty-six dark curlicues.
Here’s more dark: sometimes birds sleep
tucked under a giraffe’s dusky armpit

All posts tagged: Poetry

Podcast: Lauren Delapenha on “Supermarketing”

July 2026 Poetry Feature

Self-Portrait in The Caribbean

Feltspade

Mother is a Kind of Holding: Jenny Qi interviews Preeti Vangani

May 2026 Poetry Feature: Arielle Hebert, from Bottom Feeders

The Grave Fox

Supermarketing

Jesus’ Body Found Outside Ice Cream Parlor in Black Suburb

Nocturne for Dark Things

Discover the extraordinary in The Common.

Name:

Email: