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
New Work from LAUREN DELAPENHA, AIMEE NEZHUKUMATATHIL, ROBERT CORDING, and RACHEL HADAS
Table of Contents:
—Lauren Delapenha, “Exodus”
—Aimee Nezhukumatathil, “What They Didn’t Tell Me about Motherhood”
—Robert Cording, “A Sun”
—Rachel Hadas, “Matsinger Forest”
Exodus
By Lauren Delapenha
The Times article is about the president’s mind
and Xerox-based enterprises like Kodak, Blockbuster, dead-end jobs, and marriages,
and I am so glad the article mentions marriages
given my recent apophatic commitment to romantic
ruination, because who among us hasn’t pressed a finger into the scab
for that foreign roughness, that delicious, needling shaft of sunk cost and thought
that anything is probable in the desert,
even Moses neatly halving an ocean for a nation
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.
New work from RODRIGO TOSCANO, OLENA JENNINGS, EZZA AHMED, and WYATT TOWNLEY
Table of Contents:
—Rodrigo Toscano, “One Like”
—Olena Jennings, “The Pine”
—Ezza Ahmed, “The River That Was and Wasn’t”
—Wyatt Townley, “The Longest View” and “Christina’s World”
One Like
By Rodrigo Toscano
“Couple Bach preludes, a binding ceasefire,
One Dickenson poem, and we’re all set”
That was the post, like a gleaming beach pier
Charming half way out, torn up at the tip
Battered by statecraft, departmental verse.
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
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