All posts tagged: December

Podcast: Vix Gutierrez on “Don’t Step Off the Path”

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Transcript: Vix Gutierrez

Vix Gutierrez speaks to managing editor Emily Everett about her essay “Don’t Step Off the Path,” which appears in The Common’s most recent issue. Vix talks about writing this essay, a coming of age story about her teenage years spent in the Balkans immediately after the Yugoslav Wars, where she lived with a very small humanitarian aid organization. The essay is a fascinating look at a rarely-explored moment in time, and probes the doubts, dangers, and power that come from being a young woman in a postwar landscape of men. Vix also discusses her formative time spent at the DISQUIET International Program in Lisbon, Portugal, and in the MFA program at the University of Florida.

portrait of vix gutierrez

Podcast: Vix Gutierrez on “Don’t Step Off the Path”
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Belleville

By NANCY LEFENFELD

But after the divorce, he moved back to Belleville. To his old neighborhood, the neighborhood of his youth.

His wife—now ex-wife—hated Belleville. It reminded her of the poor Polish girl she had been. All the years they were together, they lived in Boulogne-Billancourt.

He has a small apartment on the rue du Jourdain. It’s just a few steps from the tabac where he used to buy cigarettes for his father. And it’s practically around the corner from the primary school he attended, on the rue Olivier MĂ©tra.

Belleville
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Review: Never Be A Punching Bag For Nobody

Film by NAOMI YANG

Review by HANNAH GERSEN

 

The poster for "Never Be a Punching Bog for Nobody." The top two thirds show a strip of film split three ways between half of director Naomi Yang's face, an airport runway, and a boxing gym. Underneath is the title of the film in modern cursive. Just above, a small airplane doodle takes off above the words "A film by Naomi Yang."

Sometimes visiting a new neighborhood can change your life. While scouting locations for a fashion shoot, filmmaker Naomi Yang happened upon a boxing gym in East Boston. The modest second-generation family business, with its sparring ring and wall of framed black-and-white photographs depicting local boxers, seemed like a great backdrop. Unfortunately, the gym’s owner and head coach, Sal Bartolo, Jr., disagreed, citing aprevious photo shoot that had gone badly, with high heels destroying his mats. There would be no fashion shoots in his gym. Instead, he gave Yang his pitch to all visitors, telling her to come back for a free boxing lesson. In voiceover, Yang confides to us that she did not take the offer seriously and didn’t plan to return. And yet, a few weeks later, she did. Part of her was holding out hope that Bartolo would change his mind. But another part felt drawn to boxing, and Bartolo’s gym would soon become the center of her life. Yang’s documentary tells the story of how this chance meeting at a boxing gym brought her into a deeper understanding of herself, and of the ways bullying forces can leave their mark on places as well as people. 

Review: Never Be A Punching Bag For Nobody
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December 2022 Poetry Feature: Kevin McIlvoy

Poems by KEVIN McILVOY

Editor’s note: In October a friend told me about Kevin McIlvoy’s recent passing, days after I had read and been deeply moved by the following poems. We are honored to offer them to you here. 

—John Hennessy

 

Kevin McIlvoy, known to his friends as Mc., published six novels, a story collection, and a collection of prose poems and flash fictions. A long-standing faculty member in the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers, he was my colleague but, more importantly, my friend. Mc. loved books and, like many writers, he loved them so much eventually the only way to love them more was to add to them by writing. These poems were sent out prior to his death on September 30, 2022. He is missed by many, but thanks to his work, his voice is still with us. 

—C. Dale Young

December 2022 Poetry Feature: Kevin McIlvoy
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The Way Back Home

By S. G. MORADI

 

Image of a building with colorful glass windows in the twilight.

Iran

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.

The Way Back Home
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Learning from Las Vegas (Air) Strip

By ZOE VALERY

This woman in the airport is neither catching a plane nor meeting one. (
)
Why is this woman in this airport? Why is she going nowhere, where has she been?
      —Joan Didion, “Why I Write” (1976)

 

In the margins of the Strip, planes shimmer in and out of Las Vegas. I photographed this periphery, populated by plane watchers. Why they watch and why I write seem to be connected by a tenuous link that became clearer as the afternoon transpired.

*

Palm trees and an airplane in the sky.

Sundown marks the time and the place for a discreet show among Las Vegas locals. At the golden hour, vehicles on Sunset Road veer toward McCarran International Airport and park in front of the runway. While the casino-jammed stretch of Las Vegas Boulevard known as the Strip blinks itself awake in the background, the airstrip stages a steady stream of landings and take-offs. Every day, new and seasoned plane watchers come here to view the aircrafts rolling between the sky and the Vegas skyline.

Learning from Las Vegas (Air) Strip
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Permission to Dream Forth: An Interview with Arisa White

JULY WESTHALE interviews ARISA WHITE

picture of white and westhale together

In Arisa White’s lyrical memoir, Who’s Your Daddy, she writes of her father’s absence throughout her coming-of-age in tender, genre-bending poems. July Westhale and Arisa White, former teaching colleagues and Bay Area community, approached this interview in an epistolary way, discussing form, family, voice, and taking up space on the page.

Permission to Dream Forth: An Interview with Arisa White
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You Must Like It All

By MATHILDE MEROUANI

People were singing on the steps below our living room window, and Elena removed an earphone to tell them to stop.

“You’re singing very badly!” she shouted. “I’m going to throw water on you!”

A man yelled he was too hot anyway. When he said he would like to have water thrown on him, she smiled to herself, closed her eyes, and lay back down on the sofa.

“Careful,” I said. “They might break our window again.”

She said, “It wasn’t them.”

“I know,” I said. “Obviously. I meant ‘they’ in the general sense.”

She put her earphone back in.

I put down my pen, and watched her. I had done that, every now and then, since we were six years old—stopped what I was doing to figure out something about her, to think about her face, or her hair, or the way she always laughed when I talked about death. Mostly I thought about her face. I had done that so often, by now, that I was convinced she must know, and must sometimes arrange herself to give me a good view, to give me time to look, to give me time to think about her textures. I hated it when I saw her do it with other people.

The fan was only disturbing the tips of her hair at the end of her low ponytail—the top, a little greasy, was tight on her skull. She wore pajama shorts, and, as always, when she wore shorts or skirts, I got stuck on the blond hairs on her thighs. And then I moved up, and got stuck on her skin. Like wax. Like alive wax. Wax that would not melt.

You Must Like It All
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Friday Reads: December 2022

Curated by SOFIA BELIMOVA

 

Last month, we launched Issue 24, which features wispy, ethereal poems, striking watercolors of the Stebbins Cold Canyon flora and fauna, stories about resilience in the face of war and natural disaster, and essays that celebrate humor and heritage. Wondering what our contributors are reading to keep themselves inspired? Look no further than this month’s Friday Reads.

 

Book Cover of Meet Us by the Roaring Sea by Akil Kumarasamy. Abstract drawings on black background.

Friday Reads: December 2022
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