Fiction, essays, poetry, and more.| The Common
LISA ASAGI "We and the whales, / and everyone else, / sleep and wake in bodies / that have a bit of everything / that has ever lived. Forests, oceans, / horse shoe crabs, horses, / orange trees in countless of glasses of juice, / lichen that once grew / on the cliffsides of our ancestors, / deepseated rhizomes, and stars. // Even stars are made| The Common
ELI RODRIGUEZ FIELDER The gods must have been giant children squeezing drip sandcastles from their palms, back when this land was at the edge of a sea. This used to be a mouth, I say. It feels impossible that this peculiar landscape should suddenly emerge among farms and Dairy Queens.| The Common
MONIKA CASSEL The speaker’s father, deployed to Vietnam in 1970 (the year of the dog in the lunar calendar) becomes a central figure between these grieving, unsilenceable women, but he is reticent, seen most vividly when the speaker, a child, watches as he sleeps to make sure he doesn’t choke on his tongue from seizures resulting from his service.| 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
I always thought that one of the quieter sadnesses of my father’s life—and there were plenty of noisy ones, even given that everyone, myself included, acknowledged that he was a delight to be around—was his relationship to his own education and to reading itself. Shep—everyone including his kids and his wife called him Shep—only got as far as high school before World War II intervened, and then worked at Sikorsky Aircraft, a company that built helicopters, after returning home. He...| thecommononline.org
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. Someone could have conceived of this world, but for days, no one but a pair of swans bears witness to the earthquake. The strange earth frees itself into unimaginable fissures. The bank...| thecommononline.org
JIM SHEPARD And Shep looked only a little chagrined, like someone had asked why he had never become an acrobat, and allowed as how he was sure it was very impressive, given how many distinguished people had praised it, but that it was not the kind of thing someone with his background could judge.| The Common
AYA LABANIEH You raised me, tayteh, rocking me in your lap, spooning Quranic verses into my little ears, scrubbing the living daylights out of me in the bathtub. Slapping your thighs, “Ta’a, ta’a, ta’a,” you’d say to the lovebirds we raised, “Come, come, come,” and they’d fly, all three of them, out their cages in a flurry and land on your breasts, climb your gold chains, nestle against your cheeks.| The Common
DIANE MEHTA and PHILLIS LEVIN This 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. The poets share what they draw from each other’s work, and the work of others, exploring the pleasures of language, geometric movement, and formal constraint.| The Common
DANIELA ALCIVAR BELLOLIO The image came to him all the time, uncontrollably, relentlessly: a face, combining incomprehension and terror perfectly, as though they were a natural combination. Pain was almost absent from this mixture, though he was certain that there, too, must have been pain. The image came to him all the time.| The Common
LUCHIK BELAU-LORBERG It frustrated me, probably because I’m that way too, what with the unread books and dirty dishes. So IHOP made sense for us both. Like all quintessentially American fast food chains, it’s instrumental, noncommital, infinitely replicable. In other words—simple, safe, unmournable by design.| The Common
LILY LLOYD BURKHALTER Lily Lloyd Burkhalter speaks to managing editor Emily Everett about her essay “Raffia Memory,” which appears in The Common’s spring issue. Lily talks about traveling to the Cameroon Grassfields to research the rituals and production of ndop, a traditional dyed cloth with an important role in both spiritual life and, increasingly, economic life as well.| 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
MARIAH RIGG speaks to managing editor Emily Everett about her story “Target Island,” which appears in The Common’s spring issue.| 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
By CRUZ ALEJANDRA LUCAS JUÁREZ| thecommononline.org
By CRUZ ALEJANDRA LUCAS JUÁREZ| thecommononline.org