Growing up in Philly equips you with a mixed bag of traits. For example, the ability to Roger Rabbit, a predilection for shocking pants, and, like Hemingway said, a “built-in, shock-proof shit detector.” I waxed on for too long about my often misunderstood hometown, my never misunderstood dog Fox, and how I am still at heart a mix-tape girl in this interview for The Common with Zinzi Clemmons (huge thanks to both).

Holy gravy, SAFE AS HOUSES made it onto the long list for The Frank O’Connor short story prize with fellow Iowa winner Chad Simpson and my hero, George Saunders!!! This means I get to go to the Cork Story Festival in Ireland. Thank heavens for my Irish Poetry professors in college, who warned us not to dare enter Ireland without “knowing your poems.” I will finally get to put all of my Yeats to good use…

             HYPHEN-NATION, a dispatch from Marie-Helene Bertino

The Common asked me to write a dispatch from a specific location, so I wrote from the hyphen that splits my first name. Directions are included for getting to Marie from Helene. It’s (kind of?) a travel piece.

Invitation to Miss Marianne Moore

From Brooklyn, over the Brooklyn Bridge, on this fine morning,
please come flying.
In a cloud of fiery pale chemicals,
please come flying,
to the rapid rolling of thousands of small blue drums
descending out of the mackerel sky
over the glittering grandstand of harbor-water,
please come flying.

Whistles, pennants and smoke are blowing. The ships
are signaling cordially with multitudes of flags
rising and falling like birds all over the harbor.
Enter: two rivers, gracefully bearing
countless little pellucid jellies
in cut-glass epergnes dragging with silver chains.
The flight is safe; the weather is all arranged.
The waves are running in verses this fine morning.
Please come flying.

Come with the pointed toe of each black shoe
trailing a sapphire highlight,
with a black capeful of butterfly wings and bon-mots,
with heaven knows how many angels all riding
on the broad black brim of your hat,
please come flying.

Bearing a musical inaudible abacus,
a slight censorious frown, and blue ribbons,
please come flying.
Facts and skyscrapers glint in the tide; Manhattan
is all awash with morals this fine morning,
so please come flying.

Mounting the sky with natural heroism,
above the accidents, above the malignant movies,
the taxicabs and injustices at large,
while horns are resounding in your beautiful ears
that simultaneously listen to
a soft uninvented music, fit for the musk deer,
please come flying.

For whom the grim museums will behave
like courteous male bower-birds,
for whom the agreeable lions lie in wait
on the steps of the Public Library,
eager to rise and follow through the doors
up into the reading rooms,
please come flying.
We can sit down and weep; we can go shopping,
or play at a game of constantly being wrong
with a priceless set of vocabularies,
or we can bravely deplore, but please
please come flying.

With dynasties of negative constructions
darkening and dying around you,
with grammar that suddenly turns and shines
like flocks of sandpipers flying,
please come flying.

Come like a light in the white mackerel sky,
come like a daytime comet
with a long unnebulous train of words,
from Brooklyn, over the Brooklyn Bridge, on this fine morning,
please come flying.

- Elizabeth Bishop