News & Events | Page 5 | The Common | A Modern Sense of Place: Stories, Poems, Essays & Images

Smith

October 27, 2025 Fiction, Issue 30, Issue 30 Fiction

Before my mother can return to her life and stop watching me eat, she says she must give me a dog. She swears a companion is the only way she’ll feel safe leaving me alone. It makes no sense. How can I take care of a dog if I am failing to take care of myself? She says that’s the point, to learn how to care, and if the dog dies, well, then she’ll know when to come back. I tell her no. My beloved cow figurine is companion enough. Its thick apotropaic horns will fend off the evil that is sure to return.

Moisei Fishbein: Poems from Ukraine

October 27, 2025 Issue 30, Issue 30 Poetry, Poetry, Translation, Ukraine Portfolio

By MOISEI FISHBEIN
Translated by JOHN HENNESSY and OSTAP KIN

Kol Nidre

And damp dust between stars will vanish,
and nothing will ever move or shine,
and as you look up at the sky at midday
the slanted rays will cross your sight.

Vermeer

October 27, 2025 Issue 30, Issue 30 Poetry, Poetry, Translation

By ALBERTO DE LACERDA
Translated by MARIA DE CALDAS ANTÃO

The Common Magazine · “Vermeer” by Alberto de Lacerda

To John McEwan

The architecture of the sleeves—
White—
As she composes her response
To a letter
(On the marble floor
The seal
Jumps
From the crumpled letter)

Mermaid of Longnook

October 27, 2025 Fiction, Issue 30, Issue 30 Fiction

By LAURA GERINGER BASS

Carla wore a mask while trudging down the precipitous dune that shadowed Longnook Beach, her heaven on earth. She had brought from her city stash a colorful assortment of boldly patterned Mexican face coverings to make the necessity of protecting herself from airborne viral droplets less depressing. But bright flowers and butterflies, stout yellow ears of corn, and iconic unibrow Frida Kahlo faces made it no easier to breathe on the descent.

Most days, Carla used the shaft of her sheathed sun umbrella to steady herself while maneuvering over uneven ground. Today, Tom wasn’t there to help her carry her beach chair, so she had left the heavy umbrella at home. She wasn’t one of those old ladies who needed a cane, was she? A grinding creak from her arthritic left knee followed by an aching twinge and throb of pain from her right hip warned her that the uphill return would be a challenge.

A Small Price & Without Warning

October 27, 2025 Issue 30, Issue 30 Poetry, Poetry

By MICHAEL ROBINS

The boy circles once more through the kitchen, past the ledge of photographs & the St. Francis tin, inside of which sleeps whatever’s left of the dog. My boy shows no signs of slowing down despite my tired oration on the topics of physics & premonitions, that denouement when I too was a spinning child & my head tripped down its irreversible path into the solid corner of the piano bench. No signs of slowing down nor do I mention how, playing ghost & turning beneath the sheet, I felt like a cannonball, I felt like nothing else speeding through darkness & then through the fog near the rocky shore. Afterwards, I knew only gravity, my blood, the irrefutable bleeding.

On Their First Date

October 27, 2025 Issue 30, Issue 30 Poetry, Poetry

By DIANA KEREN LEE

My parents walk hand in hand through the snow in Seoul.
Instead of flowers, my dad brings a dozen doughnuts.
As fires burn halfway around the world.

A Contentious Legacy: Art from Soviet Ukraine

October 27, 2025 Issue 30, Issue 30 Art, Studio, Ukraine Portfolio

From THE MEAD ART MUSEUM

More than thirty years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the independent states that emerged from its territory continue to grapple with its legacies. In Ukraine, this struggle has unfolded amidst a political and cultural war waged by Russia. As Vladimir Putin’s regime weaponizes the shared Soviet past in its attempts to erase Ukraine’s nationhood, the Soviet legacy remains the subject of heated debate among Ukrainians. While some identify “Sovietness” with “Russianness” and seek to remove it from the national narrative, others attempt to reclaim their Soviet legacy, emphasizing the agency of Ukrainians who created it.

The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa

October 27, 2025 Issue 30, Issue 30 Poetry, Poetry

By ANNIE SCHUMACHER

I’ve never been content with less than
God. Visions

like interior castles:
a red and white blanket
over grass, broken
slabs of tile, folded denim
in a fishing boat, sand-gold
grains of rice, all the colors
that tint a bruise—

Castanets 84 | Being fond on praise

October 27, 2025 Issue 30, Issue 30 Poetry, Poetry, Uncategorized

By ANNA MARIA HONG

for & after William Shakespeare

To your beached blessings, add this curse:
not making worse what glass makes
so clear but neither smoking the path
to your impaneled store, absconded
documents across your bathroom floor,
public security, national writ walled in
where you eat shit, as if to flank your fake
glory and never break your bloated story,
without flourish, without wit,
everywhere the news grows: May you dwell
among cases evermore.

[Purchase Issue 30 here.]

Anna Maria Hong’s books include Age of Glass and Fablesque and the novella H & G. She has received fellowships from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, the Amy Clampitt Poet Residency, Hawthornden Foundation, and the Marion and Jasper Whiting Foundation.