A rectangular, beige apartment building squats under an overcast sky. Dead branches and leaves crowd the foreground.

Kidnapped

AINUR KARIM
With a curse at everything under the sun, she released her second hand from the balcony. The sheets stretched precariously and suddenly under her weight. Dilly-dallying was not an option. Marjan swung towards the second-floor balcony, then slid down.

Summer People

BETH BOYLE MACHLAN
I wanted so badly to see that house, those dunes, the cold, deep water as our natural habitat instead of what I always kind of knew it was: a brief, bright accident of place and time and money, one that left me imprinted for life on a species to which I didn’t belong.

picture of a bible opened up

February 2024 Poetry Feature

CORTNEY LAMAR CHARLESTON
There was tear gas deployed without a tear. There were / rubber bullets fired from weapons that also fire lethal rounds. There were / armored vehicles steering through the streets of the capital that stars our maps. // What we saw was only new to the people it was new to.

Headshot of Rushi Vyas

Reaching a Pulse Point: Melody Nixon Interviews Rushi Vyas

MELODY NIXON interviews RUSHI VYAS
Growing up in the suburban US, as a brown person in white suburbia, we are taught to make grief palatable. Expressions of sorrow are permitted, so long as we "move on" or "move forward." There is the assumption that, no matter who it is that died or how they lived, once they are gone we are to only "remember the good times."

Mala Beads

MAW SHEIN WIN
When she wakes, I offer water. She sips from the glass. I ask if she needs more pillows behind her head. I look into her eyes and notice that she has deep blue lines that circle her almost black pupils. Why hadn’t I seen that before? I think of the nazars that I bought in Athens fifteen summers ago.

Cover of "The Legible Element" by Ralph Sneeden picturing a shoreline.

Through the Lens of the Littoral: A Review of Ralph Sneeden’s The Legible Element

Review by MATT W. MILLER
Sneeden, whether talking waves or poetry, is never pedantic, never flexing knowledge about water or literature. He’s just excited to make connections between ideas, fully and puckishly aware of his geeky literariness, acknowledging that “Nothing, I am told, is more boring than when I do start talking about the waves.”

Using The Common in my first-year seminars has been fun, fruitful, and helpfully startling for these classes.”

—Martha Cooley, Associate Professor of English, Adelphi University Receive classroom subscription discounts, lesson plans, and more when you TEACH THE COMMON »

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