This month we are happy to bring you “the decorations,” a meditation on Monet at Giverny, by long-time TC-contributor PETER FILKINS.
Peter Filkins
Photo courtesy of the author.
Medicine Lake (Sáttítla Highlands National Monument)
The highway is nearly empty;
the mid-June air still crisp.
There is snow on the roadside,
to the west are fire scars.
If I slowed the car, I might relax into
grief. But I am lost.
This month we welcome SHANE MORAN to our pages for the first time, and we welcome back FATIMAH ASGHAR; both poets have poems forthcoming in the print journal. Gratitude to both poets from all of us at TC.
Table of Contents:
—Fatimah Asghar: “[madness]” and “[pagamento]”
—Shane Moran: “Cedar of Lebanon” and “Les Docks / Chatelet”
This poem is republished from Water & Salt by Lena Khalaf Tuffaha, a guest at Amherst College’s eleventh annual literary festival. Register and see the full list of LitFest 2026 events here.
Do not name your daughters Shaymaa,
courage will march them
into the bullet path of dictators.
Do not name them Sundus,
the garden of paradise calls out to its marigolds,
gathers its green leaves up in its embrace.
Do not name your children Malak or Raneem,
angels want the companionship of others like them,
their silvery wings trailing the filth of jail cells,
the trill of their laughter a call to prayer.
These poems are republished from suddenly we by Evie Shockley, a guest at Amherst College’s eleventh annual literary festival. Register and see the full list of LitFest 2026 events here.
perched
i am black, comely,
a girl on the cusp of desire.
my dangling toes take the rest
the rest of my body refuses. spine upright,
my pose proposes anticipation. i poise
in copper-colored tension, intent on
manifesting my soul in the discouraging world.
Translated by DANIEL CARDEN NEMO
Translator’s note
Marin Sorescu, despite being one of the most translated Romanian writers, is one of the literary world’s best kept secrets. The reason for it, to my mind, lies squarely in the quality of existing English translations, as many of them have failed to capture his poetic essence. Twice nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature, he never received the award based on his translated work.
Like many of his poems, “Map” reveals Sorescu’s depth of thought and highly associative mind, and above all his ability to convey the most complex emotions and contemplations into a multi-layered poetry that remains accessible to all. The challenge in the translation here comes from the ability to convey an intimate, almost didactic exploration of the body, revealing the speaker’s vulnerability as he opens himself up for in(tro)spection. The body becomes a cartographic landscape, with known and uncharted areas, while the self is a terrain molded by time, animated by the soul, and inevitably oriented toward death. The poem blends stark physicality with cosmic metaphysics, suggesting that human identity, just like the Earth’s geography, contains vastness, complexity, and the unknowable. It is consciousness which imbues the world with dynamism. Without internal life, and perhaps without poetry, existence becomes static, ornamental.
#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
New poems by ALEKSANDAR HEMON and STEFAN BINDLEY-TAYLOR
This month we bring you new work by writers who also have careers in music.
Table of Contents:
—Aleksandar Hemon, “Snipers”
—Stefan Bindley-Taylor, “Naming the Wind” and “At our first house”
Aleksandar Hemon (left) and Stefan Bindley-Taylor (right)
I
Wondrous, the emptiness so close, close to an absent sea,
only sea-fields, wheat-fields, golden stubble,
though we were walking together on a path to find the sea.
Wandering together under a wide horizon.
On a road called Pas de l’Assassin.
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
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