Dispatches | The Common

Glass: Five Sonnets

April 16, 2025 Dispatches

Author’s Note:

Cold War divided Berlin haunted me growing up because it was a place where history was unavoidably visible, and when I lived there for two-and-a-half years as a student in the 1990s, I was always watching and trying to document the city’s rapid changes after the Wall fell. In 2022 a cousin found an advertisement on Ebay from circa 1939 that showed images of the Potsdamer Platz S-Bahn station from my great-grandfather’s glass factory in Waldenburg (now Wałbrzych, Poland). I’m still processing what it means to have my family history connected to a place that is a central, broken image of Berlin and so crucial to the imagination of the Cold War, particularly at a time when we in the U.S. are (or should be) thinking about what the world looks like when democracy yields to authoritarianism.

Photo courtesy of author.

Berlin, Germany

Potsdamer Platz, Berlin, April 1939

We were successful in securing major commissions—for the Reichsbahn–
underground station Potsdamer Platz and Anhalter–Bahnhof—and in
fulfilling them on time. Such large-scale projects are crucial for breaking
fresh ground for sales of Opaxit glass.

—Annual Report of the Schlesische Spiegelglas Manufaktur
Carl Tielsch G.m.b.H., 1938

Dispatches from Mullai Nilam, Marutha Nilam, and Neithal Nilam

March 19, 2025 Dispatches

Poems by S. VIJAYALAKSHMI, KUTTI REVATHI, and PUTHIYAMAADHAVI

Translated by THILA VARGHESE

A farm in Tamil Nadu, India. Photo by Flickr user Emily Abrams.

Mullai Nilam (The forest and pastoral region)

Forest Fire
By Vijayalakshmi

My forest is on fire,
and a solar sphere explodes within.

When I Go to Chicago

March 5, 2025 Dispatches

By SHELLEY STENHOUSE

Chicago, Illinois

things break. The last time, on the last day, the pipes in the kitchen burst and flooded my parents’ blonde wood floor. When I’m up in that 87^th floor apartment, I look at the sky’s blank expression. I keep the little square office window open for the sliver of nature. It’s hard to read with Fox News blaring, so I drift from room to room.

Each time before I fly to Chicago, I lose my debit card. This time it leapt out of my raincoat pocket on my way to the grocery store and refused to reappear. I had the new one shipped straight to the Hancock.

Dispatch from Marutha Nilam

February 19, 2025 Dispatches

Poems by SUKIRTHARANI, ILAMPIRAI, and SAKTHI ARULANANDHAM

Translated from the Tamil by THILA VARGHESE

Table of Contents:

Sukirtharani, “For the sake of living”
Ilampirai, “Loot”
Sakthi Arulanandham, “Land Grabbing Bird”

Black and white image of a bird with a long neck

Drawing by Sakthi Arulanandham for her poem “Land Grabbing Bird.”

Marutha Nilam (The agricultural and plains region)

For the sake of living
By Sukirtharani

In the courtyard filled with
bubbling water flowing from
the palm-leaf thatched roof
during monsoons,
grew a golden shower tree.
On that tree, yellow flowers
bloomed in clusters.
There was a nest on the tree
where sparrows with short beaks
would be chirping incessantly.
Sitting under the shade of the tree,
I would be studying passers-by.

Dispatch from Camelback Mountain

February 5, 2025 Dispatches

By CHRISTOPHER AYALA

Phoenix, AZ

Camelback’s faces wither in the sun. I used to hate Arizona and coming here and then I moved here and hated it and left and now all I think about is a good summer day and the lazy way a person can be themselves sifting through the desert, eating pizza, all that kind of stuff anyone does anywhere else, except then this mountain Camelback is available to burn off all those cheese calories. And that’s not the same everywhere. There is a part of me who everyday thinks of being back in Arizona walking around blistering days, laughing how when I had them to myself, I had thought this was the end of the line, that there had never been a worse place on earth. That’s mid-thirties type clarity.

In fall, the persimmon trees light their lanterns

January 22, 2025 Dispatches

By CHRISTY TENDING

Beppu-shi, Oita Prefecture, Japan

From beyond the waves, looking back at the shore, civilization betrays itself. The aging amusement park—its sign hasn’t been illuminated in years and the ferris wheel creaks under the weight of a glance—still perches on the hill. There are hotels, a communications tower, a shopping mall: each bows its head to the context of an environment that cannot wait to overtake it. The wooden faces of homes have settled themselves in intimate relationship: in or among the bamboo, against the mountain, above the valley, over the sea.

Water Shrine

January 8, 2025 Dispatches

By ANGELA SUCICH

Shrine surrounded by dozens of water bottles

Photo courtesy of Viviana Gaeta.

Córdoba Province, Argentina

We drive past a great mound of plastic bottles,
the shimmering of a lake siloed into a thousand
tiny two-liters.

The Laws of Time and Physics

December 11, 2024 Dispatches

By JESSICA PETROW-COHEN

Rome, Italy

I am tangled up in time. My body is the fine silver of my necklace, tying knots through curls of hair. I am the feeling of trying to untangle its spindled chain with too thick fingers, tips all pink, reaching for a dexterity they just don’t have. I’m caught up like that. Strangled.

Three Poems from Arkansas

November 27, 2024 Dispatches

By SANDY LONGHORN

Landscape of Daisy State Park with water & a rocky and green shore

Photos courtesy of author

Arkansas State Parks

Dispatch from Moscow

November 13, 2024 Dispatches

By AFTON MONTGOMERY

Photos courtesy of author.

Moscow, ID

One day, across the street from the gay coffee shop, a toddler in a blue t-shirt cocked a pistol at me. Silver glinted in October sun. He clicked the trigger, Dad and Mom looking on. Got her is what the kid said to Dad, a man closer to seven feet tall than six.

Only when I passed them in the crosswalk did I see the orange plastic that covered the gun’s tip: a toy. Dad ruffled the boy’s hair. I buried myself in my cell phone.