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Every Other Weekend

October 27, 2025 Issue 30, Issue 30 Poetry, Poetry

Winner of the 2025 DISQUIET Prize for Poetry

By CARSON WOLFE

The morning after I had woken to him
holding his flashlight beneath my bedsheets,

I told him I felt too sick to go to school.
It’s always confused me, why I chose

to stay in his house another full day,
waiting for my mother to finish work.

Like any other, we played chess
just like he’d taught me, and he let me win.

Something broken and unnameable
hanging between us—perhaps it is me,

writing this poem, watching myself
shrink as a ten-year-old, watching him

sacrifice another pawn. From this angle,
it occurs to me, after all these years,

that he knew I was going to tell.
And now I am afraid for that little girl.

How much easier it all could have been
had I tripped at the top of the stairs.

It must have crossed his mind
as those silent hours came to a close.

He didn’t reach over the gear stick
to rub my thigh on the drive home,

only stared out at the barriers
as we crossed Barton Bridge.

I always believed him
to be pathetic, a coward of a man,

but we pulled up outside my mum’s house
and he opened the door, let me out.

[Purchase Issue 30 here.]

Carson Wolfe is a Mancunian poet and the grand prize winner of the 2025 DISQUIET International Literary Prize. Their work has appeared with Poetry Magazine, The Rumpus, and Rattle, amongst others. Their new book Coin Laundry at Midnight is forthcoming with Button Poetry in spring 2026.

Ars Poetica: Getaway Car

October 27, 2025 Issue 30, Issue 30 Poetry, Poetry

By JEN JABAILY-BLACKBURN

Telekinesis stories are the girliest stories because they don’t stop
at The Body. They say your borders are so made up. Girlhood is more
than ovaries tossing replica moons at the feet of The Moon.
Our home address is a syntax that serpentines like a mouse
attempting to cross, unperceived, the grandest of ballrooms.
That’s us, always leaping into the getaway car of daydream,
lit up lavender & tangerine. We are dancing with our mouths
like no one is listening because no one is listening but us.
It’s the wild freedom of silly gooseness, feathers to cushion being told
you’re useless, repeatedly, while still being used for everything. It’s waiting
in the waiting room’s washed-out light thinking I am
an exhausted mine. No matter how much care you pour into it,
The Body’s narrative is betrayal. This expirational thing.
Do you really want us to end there?

[Purchase Issue 30 here.]

Jen Jabaily-Blackburn is the author of Girl in a Bear Suit and works as the program and outreach coordinator for The Boutelle-Day Poetry Center at Smith College. Originally from Braintree, Massachusetts, she now lives in Easthampton, Massachusetts, with her family. For more, find her at www.jenjabailyblackburn.com.

Polka

October 27, 2025 Issue 30, Issue 30 Poetry, Poetry

By ROBERT CORDING

They could have danced straight out
of a Brueghel painting into our basement,
partially finished in fake wood paneling
and a dropped ceiling that still left
some plumbing exposed—

October 2025 Poetry Feature: From DEAR DIANE: LETTERS FOR A REVOLUTIONARY

October 23, 2025 Poetry

By TINA CANE

Photo of Tina Cane by Cormac Crump

On DEAR DIANE: LETTERS FOR A REVOLUTIONARY
Between May 1968 and December 1971, poet Diane Di Prima wrote a poetry collection comprised of sixty-three “Revolutionary Letters.” Several years ago, I purchased a rare set of the first thirty-four of Di Prima’s letter poems—typed on long sheets of construction paper, stapled, and hand-corrected in ballpoint pen. Bought as a celebratory gift for myself, after having been awarded a fellowship, it’s a humble yet fierce extravagance. While the booklet appears sturdy, its yellowed pages are somewhat delicate. I rarely handle it—too worried about spilling coffee, or having someone in my house mistake the unassuming bundle for recycling. Most of the time, my sheath of Di Prima poems sits in my bookcase, atop a row of books by Marguerite Duras.

“During the Drought,” “Sestina, Mount Mitchill,” “Dragonflies”

October 8, 2025 Dispatches

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

September 2025 Poetry Feature: Earth Water Fire Poems, a Conversation

September 25, 2025 Poetry

Poems and sculptures by LISA ASAGI

This is a conversation with whales, clay, and poetry.

A wonderment with whales began in a childhood alivened by the early days of the Save the Whales movement and stories from my father of mysterious encounters on overnight boating trips. This fascination resurfaced seven years ago when I found myself working with my hands—clay sculpture and stand-up paddling led to long overdue reconnections with both earth and sea. Research deepened my curiosity: before the centuries of whaling, very different kinds of relationships existed between whales and humans. Here in the 21st century, what’s possible? These pieces are part of an ongoing series of rememberings, imaginings, longings, and offerings.

— Lisa Asagi

Hitting a Wall and Making a Door: A Conversation between Phillis Levin and Diane Mehta

September 8, 2025 Audio, Interviews, Poetry Recordings

Phillis Levin (left) and Diane Mehta (right)

DIANE MEHTA and PHILLIS LEVIN’s conversation took place over the course of weeks—over daily phone calls and long emails, meals when they were in the same place, and a weekend in the Connecticut countryside. Though what appears below can only be fragments of their full exchange, the two poets—both previous contributors to The Common—share what they draw from each other’s work, and the work of others, exploring the pleasures of language, geometric movement, formal constraint, and expressing multiple perspectives in poems.

This interview includes recordings of many of the poems mentioned, read by the author.

August 2025 Poetry Feature: Anna Malihon, translated by Olena Jennings

August 28, 2025 Poetry, Translation

By ANNA MALIHON

Translated from the Ukrainian by OLENA JENNINGS

From Girl with a Bullet, forthcoming October 2025

Presented in Olena Jennings’ seamless translation, Anna Malihon’s new collection, Girl with a Bullet, is one of the most important books of the year for those with an interest in the fate of Ukraine, a gift to Anglophone readers.

—John Hennessy, poetry editor

Table of Contents:

[The girl with a bullet in her stomach]

[Don’t go into that home]

[Now the only thing that you can do for her, Christ,]

[Unfold and dive into me, to my very bone,]

Talks with the Besieged: Documentary Poetry from Occupied Ukraine

August 21, 2025 Poetry, Translation

By ALEX AVERBUCH

Translated by OKSANA MAKSYMCHUK, MAX ROSOCHINSKY, and the author

Piece appears below in English and the original Russian and Ukrainian.

Translators’ Note

Alex Averbuch authored Talks with the Besieged on the basis of his engagement with group chats on Telegram and other public IM platforms by Ukrainian civilians in Russian-occupied Ukrainian territory. The present selection is excerpted from this larger work that explores the relentless and evolving nature of the occupation, capturing the initial bewilderment and disorientation experienced by those who stayed behind. These brief, fragmented exchanges reflect civilians navigating the chaos of war in real time. Oscillating between found poetry, a digital archive, and virtual testimony, the text presents the fears, anxieties, aspirations, and dreams of the community enduring liminality and existential uncertainty. In translating these dispatches, we’ve attempted to approximate the casual, matter-of-fact tone of participants, their poignant attempts to lighten the mood, encourage each other, and offer reassurance and consolation.While Telegram and many other IM platforms offer automatic capitalization for each new comment, we decided to use lowercase letters instead, capitalizing only toponyms and proper names. We have also removed the names of the original contributors, blurring the distinctions between them and obscuring where one utterance ends and another begins. We hope that these decisions help render the text as a continuous uninterrupted expression of hope and terror and create an impression of a living chorus, a droning and wailing unbroken human voice.