2017 | Page 5 | The Common

You’re the Sweetest One

October 31, 2017 Fiction, Issue 14, Issue 14 Fiction

May 1958

A white woman, softly sobbing, was hoisted into the back of an ambulance. On direction from the state troopers, Harvell stood idly by. For the second time since he’d arrived, the woman said the girl’s parents were Claudine and Cordezar Brown of Greenwood, Indiana. By “the girl,” the white woman meant the body lying in the ditch, covered by a sheet. Harvell looked at the bus tracks; the skid marks a few yards away, left by the fugitive car; a pair of yellow shoes about a foot apart on the side of the road.

Kul

October 31, 2017 Issue 14, Issue 14 Poetry, Poetry

By FATIMAH ASGHAR

Allah, you gave us a language
where yesterday & tomorrow
are the same word. Kul.

A spell cast with the entire
mouth. Back of the throat
to teeth. What day am I promised?

Swallowtail

October 30, 2017 Issue 14, Issue 14 Poetry, Poetry

By DANIEL TOBIN

For Bella Bond

Slowly as soundlessly in its unknowing,

what the driven thing must hunger for

is love’s white noise—a latent faring

The Interior

October 30, 2017 Fiction, Issue 14, Issue 14 Fiction

By ADAM PADGETT

Melvin came upon a man frozen and dead out in the interior, perhaps caught in a snowstorm he hadn’t anticipated. Melvin hooked his sled to a birch tree. His team of dogs sat and panted, tongues spilling out of their mouths in rosy lengths. Echo, the leader, barked, and so he stopped a moment to rub her ears. Amelia had named her for the pattern of gray and black echoing down the ridge of the dog’s spine and tail. He thought of his wife whenever he rubbed the animal’s ears, but she was gone from him, almost two years now.

This Morning I Miss Such Devotion

October 30, 2017 Issue 14, Issue 14 Poetry, Poetry

By VIEVEE FRANCIS

There is a sister whose voice is gentle as a lullaby. A lulling. Even when angered she won’t yell. A particular upbringing that eschews the loud, though such a woman can be found embracing those whose voices swell in the streets. Perhaps less saintliness than a vicarious expression of her own rage? Frustrations? Drawing the brawler, the harsh and violent close. The softness

The Common Statement

October 30, 2017 Essays, Issue 14, Issue 14 Essays

By JENNIFER ACKER

My mother has found the book in her files, among the stacks of papers and paid bills rescued from the cabin. Though it doesn’t look like much now, in its drab brown cover with faded red lettering, it was the most treasured volume of my childhood. My grandmother, who loved a good fairytale, whose favorite book was Alice in Wonderland, read Prince Uno to me, and then I read it myself, entranced, curled uncomfortably in one of the green wicker chairs with the scratchy orange cushions—only a slight improvement over the impossibly hard couch.

October 2017 Poetry Feature

October 27, 2017 Poetry

This October, we’re celebrating fall with new work from four of our contributors.

LINDA ASHOK

Becoming A Rice Pot

She held the rice pot too
close to her bosom each time
she had to take a cup of it.
Once she would take as
much, she would keep back
a fistful. She never wanted
the rice pot to be empty.

Ask a Local: Mary Miller, Jackson, Mississippi

October 26, 2017 Interviews

With MARY MILLER

Your name: Mary Miller

Current city or town: Jackson, Mississippi

Sachem’s Path

October 25, 2017 Dispatches

By MARY BERGMAN

Nantucket, MA

We became homeowners in the middle school cafeteria. School had been out about a month, the halls eerily empty, except for the huge skeleton of a humpback whale suspended 20 or so feet high above. It washed up on shore some years back, it’s bones bleached by the sun and sand. I washed ashore, too.

On Nantucket Island, the median home price is 1.2 million dollars. That’s what they say, officially. Most of the homes around the million-dollar mark have kitchens from the 1950s, and bathrooms from the 1970s. The new owners usually tear them down, or turn them into bunk-style housing for restaurant staff. None of us in the cafeteria ever dreamed we’d own anything, let alone a house, let alone here. I balanced on an itsy-bitsy red chair, nabbed out of a nearby classroom, something fit for a first grader. My knees were in my chest when they called my number.

Stickfast

October 13, 2017 Fiction

By JOHN KINSELLA

Maths 1 lesson, seated between girls — a school prefect and a sports champ. He liked both of them, but didn’t think they liked him much. In fact, he was pretty sure they thought he was a bit of a joke — not a real male and nothing to admire but okay at his schoolwork but so what. Those days his brother kept chooks that were being treated for stickfast fleas.

All posts tagged: 2017

You’re the Sweetest One

Kul

Swallowtail

The Interior

This Morning I Miss Such Devotion

The Common Statement

October 2017 Poetry Feature

Ask a Local: Mary Miller, Jackson, Mississippi

Sachem’s Path

Stickfast

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