The wish is always that we’d walk in,
Give each other bear hugs,
Tight and unencumbered,
Nothing of my body shameful,
That he’d cradle my face in his palms
And smile wide, in awe of who I’ve become,
That I’d go to him twice a year
To help me unknot something of my heart
When it broke.
By JULIO PUENTE GARCÍA
Translated by JENNIFER ACKER, with thanks to Luis Herrera Bohórquez
Para Violante, en sus primeros meses
I met Jacinta in the migrant camp where we grew up. I remember that it was the beginning of June, a few days into the start of the harvest. At that time, Jacinta had lived for nine springs—she was two years younger than me—and for obvious reasons she still used her given last name, López del Campo. Those of us who saw her timidly climb the stairs and enter the last shack, which served as our classroom, with her butterfly notebook pressed to her chest and her gaze glued to her sun-toasted legs, never imagined that in less than ten years she’d be proclaimed the artistic heir to Joaquín Murrieta, a figure shrouded in dust but fondly remembered within the Mexican communities settled in the central lands of California.
Something was crawling underneath Helen’s skin. Or wasn’t? Or was? She leaned in closer to her bathroom mirror and squinted at the S-shaped bump, red and angry around the border, with an edge of self-disgust. It had been there for two days. First, tucked timidly underneath her eyebrow, easily mistaken for an irritated hair follicle, which, no big deal, but now, if her eyes weren’t playing tricks, it had scooted its way smack-dab in the center of her forehead, spotlighted by the offensive bulb overhead. Could it have been something she ate? That rubbery shrimp in the food-court lo mein? Or an unwitting encounter with some poisonous leaf in Punta Cana last week? When she stumbled into that bush after one too many coladas? She thought of texting Bob to see if any curious growths had appeared on his pallid body but decided she’d rather physically suffer than emotionally exhaust herself in a forced flirtatious exchange that would no doubt end with a dinner invitation she’d say yes to, even though the idea repulsed her.
Poems by JORDAN ESCOBAR, OSWALDO VARGAS, ARTURO CASTELLANOS JR., and MIGUEL M. MORALES.
This fall, half of The Common’s new issue will be dedicated to a portfolio of writing and art from the farmworker community: over a hundred pages filled with the stories, essays, poems, and artwork of immigrant agricultural workers. The portfolio, co-edited by Miguel M. Morales, highlights the work of twenty-seven contributors with roots in this community.
An online portfolio will also accompany the print issue, giving more space for these important perspectives. This feature is the first of several that will publish throughout the fall. Click the FARMWORKER tag at the bottom of the page to read more, as pieces are added.
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DUR e AZIZ AMNA is the author of American Fever, a coming-of-age story replete with warmth, poeticism, and wit. It is a story about home and homeland and refuses to settle for easy definitions of either. The Guardian calls American Fever “a subversive debut” and the Los Angeles Review of Books calls it “a quiet triumph.” Over a series of emails, FARAH ALI and Dur e discussed how Dur e avoided sketching reductive pictures of Pakistan and America, illness as a vehicle for revealing uncomfortable truths, and the ways certain ideas are shattered after leaving home.
By FELICE BELLE
these biddies with their deadbolt backs/ take naps
while i construct/ canvas from corset cast
art does not wait until you are well
what they did not understand—the training was classical
By ANNA BADKHEN
As soon as I read about the albatrosses in the Times, I thought of my big sister. Natasha.
“Natasha—albatross ty nasha,” Aunt Lyuba would sing in the communal kitchen, slinging blobs of wheat porridge into my bowl with the cornflower border. Each time she’d shuffle the bowl from the stove over to Natasha-and-my table, her felt slippers would catch on the peeling linoleum floor, and I’d worry about my breakfast. But Aunt Lyuba never slipped.
Whatever Walden is to me—we swam there two Julys—
I hope to skirt that never-ending trope,
Drowning like a pilgrim in that pond.
We pushed past mothers and their kids,
Cedared summers in Wellfleet cottages,
Past foreign languages that hummed across
The narrow circle of that one dirt path
By BOTHAYNA AL-ESSA
Translated from the Arabic by SAWAD HUSSAIN
(1)
In those days, everyone had the right to have feelings.
It was natural to feel things, and the right thing to do about your feelings was to make them known. Feelings were plenty, but broadly they were segregated into two groups: Love and Fear.
In those days, there was only one way you could sin: by faking your feelings.
The creature was flushed from the snow
& flung like a tiny, limp footbag
before I could catch up to cup it below
my hands. While they collared the dog,
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