Dispatches | Page 23

Getting Bombed

November 24, 2015 Dispatches

To get to St. Govan’s Head on the southwest coast of Wales I must drive through the Ministry of Defense firing range at Castlemartin where space-age tanks launch high explosive shells across the sky. They’ve been blowing things up here since 1939. There’s a website that will tell me when the road is closed for target practice, but I’d have to drive miles in another direction to the McDonald’s in Haverfordwest to hook up to the free wifi. Instead, I stop at an inn along the way where I order a lemonade, which is carbonated and tastes like Sprite. They tell me today’s bombing begins after sunset. Welsh Pubs are usually reliable sources of information.

Rigor Celsius and Intaglio

November 11, 2015 Dispatches

By SUSAN COMNINOS

RIGOR CELSIUS

in Central New York

I’m allotted winter, allowed

Nothing that wasn’t before. Still, I am

Leading a Blind Man to the Liquor Store

October 7, 2015 Dispatches

By J. J. ANSELMI

I heard him yelling as I ate breakfast.

“Help! Won’t anyone come out and help me?” I looked out the window and saw a tall man with feathered blonde hair and large sunglasses standing on the sidewalk across the street. He reached out, trying to find something, anything, to guide him.

Bannerman Island

September 23, 2015 Dispatches

By MARIA TERRONE

There is something in me that loves an island. I live on one (Queens, New York, on Long Island, across the East River from the isle of Manhattan). I’m attracted to all kinds—those buried by volcanic eruptions; adrift in a blue void endless as the cosmos; locus of nearly extinct languages; and even the fictitious Island of Lost Souls ruled by the mad scientist Dr. Moreau.

Sunday Night in Mauerpark

September 9, 2015 Dispatches

By NOOR QASIM

I wake up from my three-hour nap because of a text from my brother.

I’ll be there in five!

After reading some texts and checking Facebook, I summon the strength to pull myself off the mattress, leaving the sheets damp with sweat behind me, and approach the red-framed mirror on the bright yellow wall of our hostel room. The nap had been good and deep but my head feels swollen with the heat and the grogginess of an interrupted sleep cycle. My eye-makeup is slightly smudged, which makes sense considering I’d applied it five minutes before I passed out. It didn’t have time to dry.

August Reads: Pacific Coast Highway

August 29, 2015 Dispatches

By JANE CAMPBELL

I was not allowed to walk or ride my bike along the highway without an adult. “Blonde hair and blue eyes,” my grandma would tell me. “Just the kind they’d want to steal.” As though at any moment, I could be taken and sold for profit like a chunk of copper wire.

“They’re not gonna steal me, Grandma,” I would tell her. “I’m too mouthy.”

August Reads: Fore Street

August 21, 2015 Dispatches

By DIANA BABINEAU

Portland was vibrant, despite its mistiness; always threatening to rain, but never truly downpouring. G. and I walked up and down Fore Street, looking for the restaurant by the same name, trying not to look too much like lost tourists. We had escaped to Portland in search of good food, which was always a comfort to us and which we needed now more than ever. Finishing our undergraduate degrees a few weeks earlier had left us feeling more somber and empty than excited. After days of enduring many heartfelt goodbyes from friends we knew we’d never see again and lengthy advice from proud, overbearing relatives, we were aching to get away from it all; to distract ourselves from the constant reminders that a chapter in our lives was closing forever.

August Reads: The Graveyard Shift

August 16, 2015 Dispatches

By BETSY TAYLOR

Casey delivered pharmaceuticals, body parts, and body fluids to nursing homes and medical facilities. He drove the graveyard shift. One night, for no good reason, I decided to tag along.

Continental Divide

August 12, 2015 Dispatches

By JAMES ALAN GILL

We decided we’d stop for the night in Denver while eating at a Taco Johns in North Platte, Nebraska, and scanned the Expedia app on my phone. There was a 4-star hotel in the suburbs northwest of the city on sale for 86 bucks, so I reserved a room because it was the same price as the Best Western.

NATÜRLICHER / VIS-À-VIS LAND, ANIMAL

July 23, 2015 Dispatches

By BRANDI KATHERINE HERRERA

Author’s Note

These “color swatch poems” are taken from a larger work in progress called Mutterfarbe, a book of experimental translations and poems using Goethe’s Theory of Colors as a primary source.

Each of the colors and their names were pulled from the landscapes and built environments I inhabited during my travels throughout France in early 2015. The nine images at the top correspond with each color swatch poem, and represent those landscapes/built environs. The “Anhang” (appendix) at the end features lines I translated from Goethe’s text on color theory—each numbered line corresponding with one of the color swatches to create a new poetic text.