Bombay / Poona
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A Swimmer in the Tropics
The City in Two Neighborhoods
October 18, 2023
Dispatches
Dispatches
Bless These Backs
October 4, 2023
Dispatches, Farmworker
This feature is part of our print and online portfolio of writing from the immigrant farmworker community. Read more online or in Issue 26.
Part of a day’s harvest, 1985.
Bradley County, Arkansas
I stood behind the orthopedic specialist and watched the giant monitor where my MRI reports glowed. He traced the contours of my spine, his index finger waving back and forth down the screen. I had gotten his name after a months-long battle with neck and back pain. What started as fire and numbness in my right arm grew into a welter of spasm and neuropathy. This doctor was known as an oracle of back pain. He bragged of being able to guess how people used their bodies just from reading his screens.
The exhaustion of having a nameless, and, therefore, untreatable problem was eroding my spirit. I needed him to find the answer. As he squinted, he rattled off his wins, spotting the bone-wear patterns of golfers, softball players, fiddlers, and software developers. He stopped to identify the small bumps on each vertebra: bone spurs. It felt like he was stalling. Had I stumped him?
The Bee-Eaters
September 20, 2023
Dispatches
Liverpool
The teeth of the excavator are wet. The cage opens, hovers, and grips a mouthful—some floor, some outer wall, some window frame, the glass disappearing with a tiny, tinkling sound.
Now, suddenly, the bedroom of the upstairs flat is revealed. A ragged cut-away, leaving just one perfect wall, wallpapered. Poppies on a purple field. The room, when it was a room, was probably small and ordinary; now, illuminated, it is the envy of all other rooms, the ultimate mezzanine. Light pours in from everywhere and the window frames blue sky.
Two Poems by Liza Katz Duncan
September 6, 2023
Dispatches
Into the Woods
August 23, 2023
Dispatches
Stone Mountain, North Carolina
A mile into the woods, I am always slightly afraid. Fear’s lace knots the cuff of an otherwise lovely afternoon. Nights, when I peek out of the tent, the moon is a bright friend too far away to help.
Two Poems by Michael Mercurio
August 9, 2023
Dispatches
Providence, RI
Existential Field Notes: Diner
If secrets are transmitted here
no neon will say, just the same
on-unless-it’s-off messages of
abundance. Bottomless coffee,
sure, and five pages of menu —
Four Country Sonnets (with Attachments)
July 26, 2023
Dispatches
By G.G. HARROW
Eastern Kentucky
After Terrance Hayes and Wanda Coleman
Attachment 1
country music is Black — indigenous — immigrant — almost successfully paved over — i made these poems from 36 common words in top-selling country songs since the ’90s according to a concert ticket corporation
Pastoral Resistance
July 12, 2023
Dispatches
Wonder
June 28, 2023
Dispatches
By DARLENE WEST
British Columbia, Canada
In the mornings, I like to follow our border collie on his nose-to-the-ground rounds: out to the creek at the edge of our land; up to the vegetable garden near the foothills; across the back yard. Sometimes, the hair on the back of his neck stands up.
Our farm land in southern British Columbia borders a mountainous wilderness. My husband and I find curiosities on our property all the time: peaches picked from our trees; tunnels under our fences; grape cluster stems, cleaned of berries. Now and then, feeding our fascination with the unknown: strips of grass, chiseled out of the lawn, coiled like jelly rolls. What roams around here at night after we turn out the lights?
To My Ghost :: Float
June 14, 2023
Dispatches
