All posts tagged: 2017

Friday Reads: November 2017

Curated by SARAH WHELAN

Whether you’ve already read Issue 14 twice or you’ve been stealing guilty glances at the untouched copy on your night stand, enjoy a little bonus content from our Issue 14 contributors! This month, our recommendations probe the supposed linear formation of our lives by questioning how we conceptualize our tasks, societies, and time itself. Poetic, comedic, and tragic, these reads shed light on contradictory forces often taken for granted.

Friday Reads: November 2017
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Author Postcard Auction 2017

headshots of writers for postcard auction

Don’t miss The Common’s annual author postcard auction! Bid for a chance to win a postcard from your favorite writer, handwritten for yourself or a person of your choice. A wonderful keepsake, just in time for the holidays!

The auction will run from 8 a.m. EST on November 20 to 6 p.m. EST on December 10, 2017. This year’s participants include Junot Díaz, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Zadie Smith, Salman Rushdie, and Daniel Handler (Lemony Snicket), among others. Click here for more information about the auction.

All proceeds will go toward The Common’s programs. These include publishing emerging writers, mentoring students in our Literary Publishing Internship Program, and connecting with students around the world through The Common in the Classroom.

Author Postcard Auction 2017
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Daniel

By SUSAN VOLCHOK

New York city streetsNew York City

Someone else, handing him leftover pizza, told me his name just the other day. As if it makes any difference whatsoever, my knowing his name, having watched him wander the neighborhood for at least two years now. Commercial rents are too ridiculous even for Café Corner: he’s been bedding down on the sidewalk fronting one side or the other of the former Figaro since the beginning of 2016. You’ve probably seen him yourself. He is harder to look at than some, a disfiguring cyst sprouting from his filthy forehead like a monster’s evil eye.

Daniel
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A Loving, Faithful Animal

By JOSEPHINE ROWE

That was the summer a sperm whale drifted sick into the bay, washed up dead at Mount Martha, and there were many terrible jokes about fertility. It was the summer that all the best cartoons went off the air, swapped for Gulf War broadcasts in infrared snippets, and your mother started saying things like I used to be pretty, you know? Christ, I used to be brave. But you thought brave was not crying when the neighbor girl dug her sharp red fingernails into your arm, until the skin broke and bled, and she cried out herself in disgust. You were still dumb enough to think that was winning.

A Loving, Faithful Animal
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Fayum Portrait

by JAMES HOCH

             [Field Manual]

Sunday, there she goes again, toddling
             out the door, off the back deck, tumbling

in her church dress, a field of hand-
             painted green stems and yellow flowers,

Fayum Portrait
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The Sky in Ohio

By MICHAEL BYERS

 

The house in Hewer was three stories, much larger than they needed, and full of odd vacancies, as though the Jenkinses, from whom Paul and his wife were subletting, had planned to be away much longer than a single semester. But the kitchen cupboards were stocked, and in the basement, alongside the usual clutter, stood a huge upright refrigerator housing a billion frosted bottles of beer, to which Paul helped himself while instructing the babies, “This is an IPA, this is a, this is a porter, this is a stout, which means it’s very dark….” The babies, on the basement floor, were checking it all out. Meanwhile, upstairs, Olive was in eager flight, scouting around, poking her head into the mudroom and the garage and the second-floor sunroom, full of hard, happy intent. “Holy!” she purred, from the top of the stairs.

The Sky in Ohio
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Uncollected Territories

By KIRSTIN ALLIO

My daughter, Mosie, called me early to remind me about the dentist. She was feeding the dogs, and I could hear them whimper and moan as she gratified them. The old dentist had suddenly stopped taking my insurance. I stood watching the lake, its blind surface: here I was, a condo with a view and I’d never had any feelings for Lake Washington.

She had nothing else to say to me. Both of my children—Basho and Mosie—were first-time souls for whom the emotional was alien.

Uncollected Territories
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