Jennifer Acker's Blog, page 8
April 18, 2025
What We’re Reading: April 2025
DAVID LEHMAN
His sentences are labyrinthine, and you soon realize how little happens in a story ... Yet we keep reading, not only for the syntactical journey but for the author’s subtle understanding of the artist’s psyche—and the thousand natural and artificial shocks that flesh and brain are heir to.
His sentences are labyrinthine, and you soon realize how little happens in a story ... Yet we keep reading, not only for the syntactical journey but for the author’s subtle understanding of the artist’s psyche—and the thousand natural and artificial shocks that flesh and brain are heir to.
April 16, 2025
Glass: Five Sonnets
MONIKA CASSEL
In ’87 I see guardsmen walk their AK-47s / on the platforms. The trains slow down but never stop. I think, / my mother was born in such a different Germany, but this is true for everyone / —so why can’t I stop looking?
In ’87 I see guardsmen walk their AK-47s / on the platforms. The trains slow down but never stop. I think, / my mother was born in such a different Germany, but this is true for everyone / —so why can’t I stop looking?
April 14, 2025
On Civilians: Victoria Kelly Interviews Jehanne Dubrow
JEHANNE DUBROW
Now we live in North Texas, hours away from the nearest shore. And yet, the massive amounts of open space—all the prairie, marsh, and plains that we have here—started to feel like another kind of vast water, another great expanse of distance and isolation.
Now we live in North Texas, hours away from the nearest shore. And yet, the massive amounts of open space—all the prairie, marsh, and plains that we have here—started to feel like another kind of vast water, another great expanse of distance and isolation.
April 9, 2025
Inês
JOÃO PEDRO VALA
You know, I’ve never met anyone quite like you before. You don’t draw the universal symbol for asking for the check, you actually sign your name on an invisible vertical paper, you trace the T’s and make that little dot on your I’s, as if someone might accuse you of fraud or something.
You know, I’ve never met anyone quite like you before. You don’t draw the universal symbol for asking for the check, you actually sign your name on an invisible vertical paper, you trace the T’s and make that little dot on your I’s, as if someone might accuse you of fraud or something.
April 4, 2025
Manuscript Consultations from The Common’s Editors
Over the years, many writers have told us they’d like feedback on their works-in-progress. Last fall, for the first time, we offered manuscript critiques by our editors to the general public! It was a huge success, and we're thrilled to open it again this spring.
April 3, 2025
Poems in Tutunakú and Spanish by Cruz Alejandra Lucas Juárez
CRUZ ALEJANDRA LUCAS JUÁREZ
Before learning to walk / and before I’d fallen upon the wet earth / already my heart hummed in three tones. / Even when my steps were still clumsy, / I already held three consciousnesses. // Long before my baptism, / already my three nahuals were running
Before learning to walk / and before I’d fallen upon the wet earth / already my heart hummed in three tones. / Even when my steps were still clumsy, / I already held three consciousnesses. // Long before my baptism, / already my three nahuals were running
March 28, 2025
Podcast: Michael David Lukas on “More to the Story”
MICHAEL DAVID LUKAS
Michael David Lukas speaks to managing editor Emily Everett about his Issue 28 essay, “More to the Story.” Michael talks about his writing process for the essay, which began when a dark family mystery moved him to research a side of his family he’d never learned much about.
Michael David Lukas speaks to managing editor Emily Everett about his Issue 28 essay, “More to the Story.” Michael talks about his writing process for the essay, which began when a dark family mystery moved him to research a side of his family he’d never learned much about.
March 27, 2025
March 2025 Poetry Feature: Catherine-Esther Cowie’s Heirloom
CATHERINE-ESTHER COWIE
Her eye-less eye. My long / longings brighten, like tinsel, the three-fingered / hand. Ashen lip. To exist in fragments. / To exist at all. A comfort. / A gutting. String her up then, / figurine on the cot mobile. / And I am the restless infant transfixed.
Her eye-less eye. My long / longings brighten, like tinsel, the three-fingered / hand. Ashen lip. To exist in fragments. / To exist at all. A comfort. / A gutting. String her up then, / figurine on the cot mobile. / And I am the restless infant transfixed.
March 25, 2025
A Tomato Behind a Glass Cage
SARAH WU
I wonder at how easily this old woman in the glass cage has become foreign. How ancient, and how strange.
I wonder at how easily this old woman in the glass cage has become foreign. How ancient, and how strange.
March 21, 2025
What We’re Reading: March 2025
JAY BOSS RUBIN
To be denied the ability to determine one’s fate and fulfill one’s potential is sometimes a societal theft, sometimes an imperial one, sometimes both. But ambition that holds no regard for others is also a theft—a self-inflicted one.
To be denied the ability to determine one’s fate and fulfill one’s potential is sometimes a societal theft, sometimes an imperial one, sometimes both. But ambition that holds no regard for others is also a theft—a self-inflicted one.
