The Common | A Modern Sense of Place: Stories, Poems, Essays & Images
Fiction, essays, poetry, and more.| The Common
Fiction, essays, poetry, and more.| The Common
PHOEBE HYDE You say you stepped over my trip line of a story by accident? You were just scanning the shelves or pages or screen for a little something light and didn’t think you’d be rattled by a little violence? You just chose badly, or got bum advice, hit a bad patch, took a wrong turn, missed the exit and didn’t mean to come out here| The Common
MADELINE SIMMS After midnight, cottonwoods are inconsequential teeth, ripped from the ground by the Mississippi River. An elm snaps like a bird’s neck: an egret. The current betrays every fluttering heart and rages on. A rock becomes sepulcher to the uprooted nest. The river could be less cruel, the winter, more forgiving.| The Common
LENA MOSES-SCHMITT I think sometimes movement can be used to show how thought is made manifest outside the body. And also just more generally: when you leave the house, when you are walking, your thoughts change because your environment changes, and your body is changing. Moving is a way of your consciousness interacting with the world.| The Common
ISSA QUINCY They are dense redbrick high rises. Each one perfectly equidistant from the other. Along the face of each building is an endless number of windows that on certain days, in certain lights, with the sun shimmering off them, seem to ripple like great red undulations flashing as you drive in their shadow.| The Common
MELISSA FEBOS I had done so much work in that year to change my thinking and myself and my ideals and my relationship to love, but I couldn't really grow much further without actually practicing it with a person. It's like reading and thinking about dancing in a new way, but you can't get good at it until you actually start dancing.| The Common
TED CONOVER It seemed to me the most mysterious, imaginative thing I had ever come across. The narrator, in language as simple as the poem I had read, describes life in a small community where... There are statues of vegetables and the sun shines a different color every day.| The Common
Weekly Writes Summer 2025 kicks off on July 14 to keep you motivated and meeting your writing goals all through the late-summer heat! Sign up now!| The Common
Who will be the writers and publishers of tomorrow? At The Common, we are committed to building literary futures. Gifts from donors like you maintain our many author-centric programs and allow us to keep publishing| The Common
