The Common

Kanchi Sharma (left) and Yu-Mei Balasingamchow (right) KANCHI SHARMA and YU-MEI BALASINGAMCHOW first connected despite the limits of time zones – Kanchi in Mumbai, Yu-Mei in Boston. Years after seeing each other in pixels, they met in person at AWP. Bringing it full-circle, they met over Zoom to discuss Yu-Mei’s debut novel, Names Have Been Changed, its masterful portrayal of modern exiles, diaspora, concealment, and the quiet violences of bureaucracy and border.

By KATY SIMPSON SMITH In the middle of the Mediterranean, 50 miles from Sicily, 200 miles from Libya, floats a country whose general character has been defined by centuries of accretion and erasure. This is the island that played host to this spring’s newest reality dating show, Love Overboard, in which sixteen sculpted young people battle for connection and status on a luxury yacht.

By LIZ JOHNSTON and EOGHAN WALLS Review by JULIA LICHTBLAU It’s hard to fight for other organisms and remain on speaking terms with humanity. People don’t care about extinction. What’s one species, they say, compared to my precious convenience? Trees and birds do their bit for the ecosystem merely by existing. Humans are uniquely selfish and destructive. Come to think of it, maybe we’re the expendable species.

By GRACILIANO RAMOS Translated by MILA MASSAKI GOMES Translator’s Note In Portuguese, “Baleia” means whale. Baleia… how funny it had seemed to me when I first encountered Graciliano Ramos’s work — a dog named “Whale.” It isn’t, of course, a simple or even silly name. In this short story, excerpted from the famous Brazilian novel Vidas Secas (1938), we follow a dog as she lives out her last miserable, heart-wrenching moments.

Podcast: Lauren Delapenha on “Supermarketing” Listen on Apple Podcasts. Listen on Spotify. Transcript: Lauren Delapenha Podcast LAUREN DELAPENHA speaks to EMILY EVERETT about her poems “Supermarketing” and “If You Are Learning English,” which appear in The Common’s spring issue. Lauren also discusses her process and revision methods, her time at the Disquiet Literary Program in Lisbon, and how balancing both teaching and writing challenges her. Lauren is a Jamaican poet and English teacher.

By ANA PRUNDARU Phone Booth Pantoum Konstanz, Germany remember, it was the nineties yours was born from homesickness a tiny fit of existentialism a glass confessional, dressed in farewell deliriums yours was born from homesickness before you scrolled, hearted and liked dressed a glass confessional in farewell deliriums windows cracked open as fortune cookies before you scrolled, hearted and liked you pushed those doors apart like an old bruise windows cracked open as fortune cookies the...

Eve Alexandra (left) and Sarah Audsley (right) SARAH AUDSLEY and EVE ALEXANDRA, both poets based in Vermont, share a complicated connection to the landscape and the place they call home. Each leverages the pastoral; however, both poets upend the pastoral’s tradition to explore identity, gender, familial relationships, grief, and their connection (or dislocation) to place.

Original by SHATADAL MITRA Translated by BISHNUPRIYA CHOWDHURI Piece appears below in English. Click here to read the original in Bengali. Translator’s Note I believe what makes stories great is their ability to surprise and hearten their readers simultaneously. The tale of Khanandihi, which revolves around a quintessential Bengal village as it lives through generations of transformation— social, economic, and ethical—does so with an unparalleled efficacy that deserves a global readership.

New poems from AMIYA MORETTA, EMILY MARIE PASSOS DUFFY, JOSE HERNANDEZ DIAZ, and JOHN KINSELLA. Table of Contents: Amiya Moretta, “Magnolia Prophets” Emily Marie Passos Duffy, “Corpus Luteum” Jose Hernandez Diaz, “Ode to Chicken Quesadillas” John Kinsella, “Limbo Sub-canto 4” and “Story of the Sparks” Top, left to right: John Kinsella and Amiya Moretta.

By AIDAN CAHILL Photo courtesy of the author. Boise, Idaho It is late afternoon, and the June sun flirts with descent like a nervous pool diver. The foothills to my back are sprayed white-gold, as is Riverstone, my old K-12 school just across the cheatgrass field to my right. Its concrete panel walls and sawtoothed roof are a familiar reminder of years subjected to exam booklets and wormish spaghetti.