The Commuter’s Most Popular Posts of 2024
There’s no perfect metaphor for the experience of looking back on a year of The Commuter issues. It’s a little like holding a whole packet of loose M&Ms in your hand all at once. There’s an element of wandering through the mirror-room at the funhouse, but also The Commuter is way more fun than that because there are no rules when it comes to what makes a Commuter piece a Commuter piece. This collection of the year’s top five most read issues proves that: There are funny pieces, philosophical pieces, tearjerkers, and wacky stuff that doesn’t fit any category but is unmistakably brilliant (I’m looking at you, Mrs. Morrison!).
Work by the likes of Mary Jo Bang, Sandra Newman, Daniel Borzutzky, Amy Chu, and Sarah Carson have appeared this year. There have been stories about taking a test on the “Whole Wide World”, poems about Pikachu, along with celebrations of plain normal stuff.
Yes, this has been an (expletive-here) year for a lot of people, but I think we can all come together around the fact that The Commuter makes the world brighter. More than 90% of the work published in TC comes from unsolicited submissions and debuting writers. It looks for the needles and funky flowers growing deep in the haystacks of whatever contemporary literature is. It’s a haven for experimental writing that actually pays its contributors. And so, as The Commuter gears up for its seventh year of publication, please consider donating to our year-end fundraiser by December 31st. Happy holidays, and enjoy The Commuter’s most popular pieces of 2024!—Willem Marx, Contributing Editor
The list starts with the most-read, continuing in descending order.
My Superstitions Are Your Inheritance by Esther Hayes
Part love song, part lullaby, part elegy for a lost child, Esther Hayes’ flash story has made waves this year—not only is it the most read piece on The Commuter, it was chosen by Carmen Maria Machado to win Selected Shorts’ 2024 Stella Kupferberg Memorial Short Story Prize. In it, a mother speaks across space and time to her child, describing rules for how to handle brooding hens, butcher pigs, and have children. “I know I sound cruel,” the narrator admits, “but please forgive me. Superstitions are all I have to protect you.”
I’m in Love with My Ex’s Absence by Christopher Boucher
“I loved you, and when you left, you left a Space. And I fell in love with that Space.” So begins Christopher Boucher’s poignant short story about heartbreak, love, and the eerie void that opens up when a relationship ends.
Be a Woman, Be Yourself, Be Miserable by Sheila Heti
These are the “B”s excerpted from Sheila Heti’s phenomenal Alphabetical Diaries—a decade-long project that saw Heti pare down hundreds of thousands of words from her diaries and then organize each sentence alphabetically. The result is intimate, hilarious, raw, and sounds like this: “Because I am in debt and don’t know how I’m going to live. Because I am not writing. Because I am sad. Because I am with a man. Because I couldn’t leave, I tried to find the dinner party interesting, but I was unable to find anything interesting about Lemons’s new girlfriend. Because I had love until this weekend, I didn’t think money was important.”
The Cancer Is Calling From Inside the House by G. H. Yamauchi
Beginning with a life-changing breast cancer diagnosis, this graphic narrative follows a woman as she faces the possible futures that suddenly feel all too real. She will grow old or she won’t. She will be an integral part of her grandchildren’s lives or she will be gone. “Can anyone be philosophical all the time? I can’t,” the story notes. Even though it’s impossible to always be pragmatic about tragedy, this is a piece about embracing life’s hard truths and its beautiful ones.
Mrs. Morrison Corrects Her Obituary by Taisiya Kogan
Making her literary debut in the pages of The Commuter, Kogan’s darkly humorous story imagines one Mrs. Morrison making a few pointed changes to the way she would like to be remembered: “Amelia Morrison, beloved [neglected] wife and [disappointed] mother, [also, a limber and enthusiastic lover to several of her husband’s grad students] passed away last night [which dear hubby only noticed today].”
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