Jennifer Acker's Blog, page 14
December 9, 2024
Churning Up Mystery: A Conversation between Theresa Monteiro and Abbie Kiefer
ABBIE KIEFER
Grief can feel like a low hum or a fog—always there, always making you aware of its presence, but in a way that doesn’t require you to examine it. I knew, that if I wanted to write meaningfully about loss, I’d have to think closely about its distinctive shape. What particular qualities made a shuttered mill so affecting to me?
Grief can feel like a low hum or a fog—always there, always making you aware of its presence, but in a way that doesn’t require you to examine it. I knew, that if I wanted to write meaningfully about loss, I’d have to think closely about its distinctive shape. What particular qualities made a shuttered mill so affecting to me?
December 5, 2024
Translation: Side Entrance to the House
AMAL AL SAEEDI
It always felt as though I was on the cusp of betraying some kind of covenant if I acted out of my own free will. Like someone who drives an expensive car, but doesn’t own it, and is worried about embarrassing themselves if they get into an accident—ignoring the fact that this accident would put their life in danger.
It always felt as though I was on the cusp of betraying some kind of covenant if I acted out of my own free will. Like someone who drives an expensive car, but doesn’t own it, and is worried about embarrassing themselves if they get into an accident—ignoring the fact that this accident would put their life in danger.
December 3, 2024
The Con Artist
GLENN BERTRAM
When she was near him he felt close to God, or to the idea of a god, though they almost never talked about faith. She made him want to pray. He didn’t know why, but he tried it a few times when he was alone in his apartment. He didn’t pray for peace or joy ... He prayed the giving wouldn’t stop.
When she was near him he felt close to God, or to the idea of a god, though they almost never talked about faith. She made him want to pray. He didn’t know why, but he tried it a few times when he was alone in his apartment. He didn’t pray for peace or joy ... He prayed the giving wouldn’t stop.
November 29, 2024
Podcast: Megan Tennant on “Little Women”
MEGAN TENNANT
Megan Tennant speaks to managing editor Emily Everett about her story “Little Women,” which appears in The Common’s brand new fall issue.
Megan Tennant speaks to managing editor Emily Everett about her story “Little Women,” which appears in The Common’s brand new fall issue.
November 27, 2024
Three Poems from Arkansas
SANDY LONGHORN
You are standing in an Ozark oasis, / the park interpreter tells our tiny group / of three strangers. We have walked / twenty yards onto the Ozark Highland Trail
You are standing in an Ozark oasis, / the park interpreter tells our tiny group / of three strangers. We have walked / twenty yards onto the Ozark Highland Trail
November 22, 2024
What We’re Reading: November 2024
CARSON WOLFE
Exposition Ladies composes a love letter to the poorly scribbled female characters of Hollywood who exist solely to move the plot along. Each poem takes on the persona of one of these unformed vessels, often beginning with ‘I am the exposition lady’. Reminiscent of Carol Ann Duffy's The World's Wife, Exposition Ladies is a perfect example of how a book can contain a singular idea and expand outward.
Exposition Ladies composes a love letter to the poorly scribbled female characters of Hollywood who exist solely to move the plot along. Each poem takes on the persona of one of these unformed vessels, often beginning with ‘I am the exposition lady’. Reminiscent of Carol Ann Duffy's The World's Wife, Exposition Ladies is a perfect example of how a book can contain a singular idea and expand outward.
November 21, 2024
November 2024 Poetry Feature: New Work from our Contributors
G. C. WALDREP
I am listening to the slickened sound of the new / wind. It is a true thing. Or, it is true in its falseness. / It is the stuff against which matter’s music breaks. / Mural of the natural, a complicity epic. / The shoals, not quite distant enough to unhear— / Not at all like a war. Or, like a war, in passage,
I am listening to the slickened sound of the new / wind. It is a true thing. Or, it is true in its falseness. / It is the stuff against which matter’s music breaks. / Mural of the natural, a complicity epic. / The shoals, not quite distant enough to unhear— / Not at all like a war. Or, like a war, in passage,
November 19, 2024
Kaleidoscope of the Heart: A Review of Joseph Bathanti’s The Act of Contrition
Review by STEPHEN HUNDLEY
Omega Street. Malocchio. Napolitano and Calabrese. Fritz, Frederico, and Fred. In The Act of Contrition, a collection of linked stories and one novella, Joseph Bathanti reconstructs the mid-twentieth century in the East Liberty neighborhood of Pittsburgh.
Omega Street. Malocchio. Napolitano and Calabrese. Fritz, Frederico, and Fred. In The Act of Contrition, a collection of linked stories and one novella, Joseph Bathanti reconstructs the mid-twentieth century in the East Liberty neighborhood of Pittsburgh.
November 18, 2024
The Shirt
DAVID RYAN
He'd forgotten this shirt for many years, just another drifting article of faith, as the smaller artifacts of the last couple of decades have been subsumed, lost beneath the greater accrual of a pain fused to the loneliness, the unbearable gathering of what Jonathan sees as Now in light of Then.
He'd forgotten this shirt for many years, just another drifting article of faith, as the smaller artifacts of the last couple of decades have been subsumed, lost beneath the greater accrual of a pain fused to the loneliness, the unbearable gathering of what Jonathan sees as Now in light of Then.
November 13, 2024
Dispatch from Moscow
AFTON MONTGOMERY
The forestry scientists said Moscow has some of the unhappiest trees in the world. I remember clearly my friend telling me this, though I don’t remember much about her explanation of why. It’s possible she said unhealthiest rather than unhappiest and my brain overwrote her telling with my own truth.
The forestry scientists said Moscow has some of the unhappiest trees in the world. I remember clearly my friend telling me this, though I don’t remember much about her explanation of why. It’s possible she said unhealthiest rather than unhappiest and my brain overwrote her telling with my own truth.
