2020 | Page 5 | The Common

Her Borders Become Her

October 28, 2020 Essays, Issue 20, Issue 20 Essays, Lusosphere

She had been dead nearly a decade before she sought me out. I was in my late twenties when she first came to me; then, again and again over a period of several years, whenever I came home to visit and always in the middle of the night as I slept in my old room. Before it was mine, it was hers. In the recurring dream or vision, I opened my eyes to darkness and knew I was not alone. She stood in the far corner by the closet, waiting for something. The air between us, a conduit—even from across the room, I felt her body tingling my skin. You don’t always have to see a thing to know it exists.

Ascendant Scorpio

October 28, 2020 Issue 20, Issue 20 Poetry, Lusosphere, Poetry, Translation

By MATILDE CAMPILHO
Translated by HUGO DOS SANTOS

for José

On the night Billy Ray was born
(New York, 28^th and 7^th)
not one soul contemplated the geraniums
There was, however, the sound of the world falling
like multiple stalactites
in the area surrounding the hospital

The Common Statement

October 28, 2020 Essays, Issue 20, Issue 20 Essays

By JENNIFER ACKER

In 1969, my grandfather gave the keynote address to the Master Brewers Association of America. He was not a brewer himself, but he had worked thirty years as a consultant to the industry, and by this time he had provided advice to breweries in every state of America and seventy countries.

The title of his speech was “How to Make Beer That Sells—with What You’ve Got!” He focused first on the importance of quality and outlined the industry standards: 1) Beer must be “clean and pleasing in flavor” as well as 2) “pleasing in appearance”; and 3) “it should not vary in flavor or appearance from day to day.” While beer drinkers today, myself included, wouldn’t agree with his definition of “pleasing” as “a complete absence of distinctive flavor components,” I suppose he can be forgiven for being at the mercy of the era’s bland American palate. As an industrial engineer, his main focus was on cleanliness, efficiency, and reproducibility; he did not seek to be a tastemaker, nor did he encourage this in his clients.

The Treasure Hunt of August Dias

October 28, 2020 Fiction, Issue 20, Issue 20 Fiction, Lusosphere

By KATHERINE VAZ

The apricot tree in my childhood yard would sieve the night. Pouring through the openwork of the leaves, the moonlight littered the ground with patches shaped like bats. Because we lived in the Sunset District of San Francisco, sea drafts kept ruffling the leaves, so the bats were always fluttering their wings. Sometimes I would lie down and let the light-bats tap all over me. We lived in the bottom flat of a spindly three-story house, and there was a fig tree too, and blackberries on brambles thick as the Lord’s crown of thorns, right in the heart of the city. We had picnics with the queijadas my father made—the coconut tarts that were a specialty of his family’s bakery on the island of Terceira in the Azores. His job while raising me, his only child, was fulfilling dessert orders for restaurants, and he rented a tiny industrial kitchen in Chinatown from three to nine in the morning. Once, a triumph, the Tadich Grill requested his alfenim to decorate their pastry cart—the white sugar confection molded into doves or miniature baskets.

Alone, I Arrive in a Looted City

October 28, 2020 Issue 20, Issue 20 Poetry, Lusosphere, Poetry, Translation

By JOSÉ LUÍS PEIXOTO
Translated by HUGO DOS SANTOS

Alone, I arrive in a looted city
and walk slowly, my arms hanging
loosely, I look through open doors,

The Year of the Birth of Alberto Caeiro

October 28, 2020 Essays, Issue 20, Issue 20 Essays, Lusosphere

from Pessoa: A Biography

By RICHARD ZENITH

The following chapter from Pessoa: A Biography, forthcoming from Norton/Liveright, tells the story of how Alberto Caeiro, Fernando Pessoa’s first major heteronym, came into existence. The other full-fledged heteronyms, Álvaro de Campos and Ricardo Reis, would emerge three months later. (The heteronyms, Pessoa claimed, were not mere pseudonyms, since they thought and felt and wrote differently from their creator.) Although he had published some critical essays and a passage from The Book of Disquiet, Pessoa was still virtually unknown as a poet. Literature, moreover, was not Pessoa’s only interest. Throughout his adult life, he wrote prolifically about philosophy, religion, psychology, and politics.

The story of Caeiro is preceded by a brief sketch of the political climate in Europe before World War I, especially in Portugal, where, less than four years earlier, a revolution had toppled a much–discredited monarchy, replacing it with a tumultuous republic.

For this publication in The Common, I have excluded most of the notes of the book version (bibliographical information, mainly) while adding other notes to clarify references to people and events mentioned in earlier chapters.

It’s Raining in L.A. What Else I’m Pose to Do

October 28, 2020 Issue 20, Issue 20 Poetry, Lusosphere, Poetry

By SHAUNA BARBOSA

The wolf belongs to the boy I to the wolf
I ask permission to still be myself this time of night.
Sem barriga, sem fome, sem bebida. Blue notes
from a dead man’s tribute creep up my balcony.
Damn, you know how you know a song,

The News

October 28, 2020 Issue 20, Issue 20 Poetry, Poetry

By BRUCE SNIDER

Over a hundred men suspected of being gay are being abducted, tortured and even killed in the southern Russian republic of Chechnya…
—CNN

Looking out at the blue sky
we listen to news
of men in Chechnya. Touching
counters, our washrags move like ghosts.
You sweep the kitchen. I tend the cry
of the washing machine, the low roof
that is our only roof.

Exile

October 28, 2020 Fiction, Issue 20, Issue 20 Fiction, Translation

By CLARA OBLIGADO
Translated by RACHEL BALLENGER

On December 5, 1976, I arrived in Madrid from Argentina. I flew Iberia airlines, caught the plane in Montevideo because I was afraid of the disappearances happening at the border. I left wearing summer clothes, as if I were a tourist heading for the beaches of Uruguay, then, two or three days later, landed in Madrid, where it was winter. My father and sister saw me off. It took me six years—the years of the dictatorship—to return.

Under Our Skin—A Journey

October 28, 2020 Essays, Issue 20, Issue 20 Essays, Lusosphere, Translation

By JOAQUIM ARENA
Translated by JETHRO SOUTAR

And then, as is its wont, death comes knocking at the door. This time from two thousand miles away.

I try to get the image I have of him in my head to focus. The man who tried to be my father for over thirty years. Officially, not biologically, and not anymore. A death that will nevertheless force me home, back to Lisbon, just when I thought I’d found my place on this dry and sleepy island.

All posts tagged: 2020

Her Borders Become Her

Ascendant Scorpio

The Common Statement

The Treasure Hunt of August Dias

Alone, I Arrive in a Looted City

The Year of the Birth of Alberto Caeiro

It’s Raining in L.A. What Else I’m Pose to Do

The News

Exile

Under Our Skin—A Journey

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