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!
MARY BERGMAN
We are losing this place twice over: first to money, and then to sea. There are ways to quantify these losses: only 3,200 bushels of scallops were caught this past winter and more than $2 billion in real estate transactions were recorded last year. My parents aren’t sure where they should be buried.
KIM CURTS MATTHEUSSENS
in Rome a monumental marble typewriter / ticked out their story into the sky: two lovers / devour time. she lay on the lawn near Trajan's / column. he plucked letters from her dress, / her hair, served them to her by hand, by mouth.
S. G. MORADI
We grew up on salty rocks, collecting bullets, / holding onto hope as if it were a jump rope that / come our turn, would go on spinning forever / our feet never failing us. / We ran through sunburnt alleys, kicking up / clouds of dust that were quick to settle / as if somehow knowing / that we had nowhere else to go.
