The Common: Issue #15

by Jennifer Acker

Issue #15 Table of Contents

Fiction
RYŪNOSUKE AKUTAGAWA
From Husband Number Four (translated by Nathaniel Gallant)

MARILYN SIDES
The Haiku Master

PHILIP BRUNST
Fascinations

KATE BERSON
Hydroambulante

EMMA COPLEY EISENBERG
Forty-Four Thousand Pounds

Arabic Stories from Jordan
ELIAS FARKOUH
A Man I Don’t Know (translated by Maia Tabet)

MUFLEH AL-ODWAN
After Creation, Before the Fall (translated by Alice Guthrie)

JA’FAR AL-OQUAILI
Guests with a Heavy Presence (translated by Alice Guthrie)

MAJIDAH AL-OUTOUM
The Village Idiot (translated by Alice Guthrie)

JAMILA AMAIREH
It Happens (translated by Thoraya El-Rayyes)

GHALIB HALASA
The Slaves (translated by Thoraya El-Rayyes)

FAIROOZ TAMIMI
Operating Manual (translated by Thoraya El-Rayyes)

MAHMOUD AL-RIMAWI
The Bus (translated by Elisabeth Jaquette)

HAIFA' ABUL-NADI
Propositions (translated by Elisabeth Jaquette)

Essays
LIZ ARNOLD
The Shed

LAURA MAHER
On Blood and Water

NOOR NAGA
Arabs on the Beach in Alexandria

Poetry
ERICA DAWSON
From When Rap Spoke Straight to God

ROSEBUD BEN-ONI
In New Cities We Run into No One

JOHN ALLEN TAYLOR
Johnny

MARLIN M. JENKINS
Sticking Around the Karate Tournament to Watch the Teenage Black
Belt Boys Fight

ARAN DONOVAN
Before I Meet My Love, I Met My Love

RICARDO PAU-LLOSA
Scarpia (Aside)

CATHERINE POND
Un Clou Chasse L’Autre

RICHARD HOFFMAN
Bobber

DIANE MEHTA
Fog Trench

NICK MIRIELLO
Tree House

RANDOLPH THOMAS
January’s Child

SARA ELKAMEL
Besmellah

GARY J. WHITEHEAD
Coronation

MORIEL ROTHMAN-ZECHER
Wetland

NED BALBO
Stella’s Children Look Out from a Photo Faded Gold

JANE SATTERFIELD
Totem

MACEO J. WHITAKER
Wholesome

TEOW LIM GOH
Passages

JESSICA LANAY
A Complicated Letter to Sándor Ferenczi

LINDA ASHOK
We Two Women Can Father a Child

Images
MARTHA ROSLER
Home Invasion / Introduction by Darsie Alexander

RAFIK MAJZOUB
From the Room 11 Series

ALAA TAWALBEH
From the Jane Doe Series

Paperback

Published April 24, 2018

About the author

Jennifer Acker is founder and editor in chief of The Common. Her short stories, essays, translations, and reviews have appeared in the Washington Post, Literary Hub, n+1, Guernica, The Yale Review, and Ploughshares, among other places. Acker has an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars and teaches writing and editing at Amherst College, where she directs the Literary Publishing Internship and organizes LitFest. She lives in western Massachusetts with her husband. The Limits of the World is her debut novel.