Here at The Common, we’re all about place, so we’ve been experimenting with more ways for readers to experience the locations of our pieces. Using this map, you can explore all the dispatches we’ve published set in New York City. Get to know Eli the Seltzer Man, the nighthawks on the Upper West Side, and more!
ERICA EHRENBERG
"Nearby, / women came out of the rubble / still pregnant years after / the children were conceived. / I kept you in, the women said, / because you were the pin / holding down the world"
This forest is named for the first head of the National Forest Service, who warned of assuming natural resources were inexhaustible, who said without conservation we pay the price of misery, degradation, and failure, who asked if these resources were for the benefit of us all or for the use and profit of a few? He was also a leading eugenicist.
CIGAN VALENTINE
We bite into the cake. I taste the house in it, the workings of a stranger’s hands. I taste the dirt covering everything, the metallic water, the towering blue sky. The cake has sunk into itself in the middle, so each piece is slightly soggy, the apple tasting too earthy, the sugar sitting too heavy.
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