Buone Vacanze

Dispatches will be taking a vacation during the month of August. In the meantime, please take a virtual vacation with some of our recent dispatches: Join Julia Lichtblau as she contemplates economics in sun-soaked Lisbon; Maura Candela as she stumbles upon her husband’s roots in Sicily; James Gill as he recalls a paradise lost in Canada’s Saskatchewan prairies, and Todd Pitock as he gazes up at the cold night sky in one of the hottest places on earth.

Or, peruse our archives where you can browse dispatches by location.

See you in September!

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Buone Vacanze

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Two Poems by Dalia Taha, translated by Sara Elkamel

DALIA TAHA
All we own are our lips / and the pupils of our eyes—the car / will plow into all of this. / And still, life is far too complex / for words like victory or defeat. // Life is Salma on the balcony / moving plants to bigger pots, in her eyes / the settlement’s lights. 

Monrovia, Liberia at night

Electricity Comes in the Morning

MARVIN GARBEH DAVIS SR.
A sudden hum, a soft pulse through the walls, and the bulbs bloom again: white, merciful, blinding, as if mercy itself has switched on the lights. You can hear the city rejoice. Someone shouts, “Current don come!” Radios click on. Pots clatter. Even the roosters seem to crow out of turn. The sound of the generator fades, its duties relieved.

The Constancy of Ocean Sounds

JOHN T. HOWARD
Another morning in New Harbor arrives, this time with sun in place of cloud and fog. The waves, still audible, seem almost louder than yesterday. The dunting off in the near distance swallowed up by the constancy of ocean sounds. Tumult, clamor, crash.