for Ange Mlinko
Of C. H. Krumm—Charles Harrison, or Harry—
a single trace remains on Catalina,
so oxidized, so salt-worn I could barely
make out the name. How many must have seen it
while rambling from or trudging to the ferry
and given it no mind, no second look?
Despite the brief streaks of self-
belief, a stubborn defeat pervades.
Absent a job, absent a title.
I want to declare: a great undoing has taken place.
And I don’t know where to search for the bricks
that once made up the house of who I used to be.
By LIZ DEWOLF
The buzzer rattles the empty room. Nearly empty—there’s the bed behind the wooden screen, the couch where Laurel sits in her underwear. Since Arda’s text that afternoon, she’s waited restlessly for him to arrive, imagining his route from where she lived with him on the Asian side of Istanbul to her new apartment on the European side: the narrow streets down to the ferry station, the boat churning through silver water, the near-vertical climb to her sixth-floor walkup in Beyoğlu. She presses the button that unlocks the building’s entrance and decides not to get dressed.
Arda enters her apartment without knocking. “Mutlu yıllar,” he says, though it’s now several weeks into 2013. For the first time since Laurel’s lived in Turkey, they didn’t celebrate the New Year together.
Empty streets, even our taxi
is missing, but the train station
is crowded. I comb
my hair, looking at
the reflection
in the ticket window.
April brings new poems by our contributors: SHARON DOLIN, KERRY JAMES EVANS, ANDREW HUDGINS, AND MARIA TERRONE!
Sharon Dolin, Kerry James Evans, Andrew Hudgins, Maria Terrone (from left to right)
Table of Contents:
—Sharon Dolin, “Savor”
—Kerry James Evans, “Smoky”
—Andrew Hudgins, “After Death”
—Maria Terrone, “Alchemy”
April is poetry month! To kick it off, we have new poems by our contributors, CARSON WOLFE, BENJAMIN PALOFF, and JEHANNE DUBROW!
Jehanne Dubrow (left), Carson Wolfe (center), and Benjamin Paloff (right)
Table of Contents:
—Jehanne Dubrow, “Encounter” and “Winter Rye”
—Benjamin Paloff, “Of the Art of Conferring”
—Carson Wolfe, “I Rank Places by How Much They Charge for Pringles”
Art by Jonathan Ehrenberg
This month we are happy to bring you “the decorations,” a meditation on Monet at Giverny, by long-time TC-contributor PETER FILKINS.
Peter Filkins
Applications for The Common Young Writers Program, a fully virtual summer writing class for high school students (rising 9-12), are now open! Over the span of two weeks, students will be introduced to the building blocks of fiction, learn to closely read a text the way a writer would, and leave having written and edited a short story of their own. Taught by the editors and editorial assistants of Amherst College’s literary magazine, the two summer courses (Level I and Level II) run Monday-Friday and are open to all aspiring writers in grades 9-12. The program starts on July 20 and ends with a celebration of student work on the 31st. Applications close May 18 at midnight.
Full and partial need-based tuition waivers are available for both levels; we hope that no student will let financial difficulty prevent them from applying. Tuition waivers will be awarded to students with strong applications who cannot attend the program without financial assistance. In the application, students will have the opportunity to briefly describe their financial circumstances and state the amount they could afford to pay, if any, if accepted into the program. No tax returns or other documentation is required.
Allison Pitinii Davis (left) and Rosanna Young Oh (right)
ALLISON PITINII DAVIS and ROSANNA YOUNG OH explore how Davis’ personal connection to Youngstown, Ohio and scholarly interest in labor inspired her debut novella, Business. They discuss representing the Rust Belt in literature, their identities as eldest daughters who worked for their family businesses, and the dignity and ethos of the working-class communities that raised them. Allison Pitinii Davis is the author of the poetry collection Line Study of a Motel Clerk , Poppy Seeds, and Business, a novella in Agency 3: Novellas . She serves as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Poetry at Ohio State University.
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