Dispatches | Page 33

The Fiction and Nonfiction of the St. Petersburg Pier

March 1, 2013 Dispatches

The modern novel is probably an unintended consequence of nineteenth-century European cities. James Wood glosses the idea in his handbook How Fiction Works. The breakthrough narration in Madame Bovary, for instance, a stylish authorial voice that seemingly dissolves into the consciousness of its subjects on a wash of image and detail, corresponds to a boom in European industrial urbanism. Its vector is the flâneur: the young and loitering, the unemployable café-sitters, the arcade-browsers. These onlookers adapted their eyes to the city’s “large, bewilderingly various amounts of detail,” says Wood.

Alaska, Massachusetts

February 27, 2013 Dispatches

By NAILA MOREIRA

Beyond the bridge of Highway 91, beyond the levee and the last line of houses at the outskirts of town, civilization goes to rural scenes. First you pass a patch of low trees; then a small paddock and barn where two horses live; and then you come to the cornfields — wide, flat, golden and stubbly by the riparian woodland of the Connecticut River. I’ve always wanted to come to these fields to see the stars, but the landscape is lonely, and I would be afraid to come alone at night.

A Not-so-Failure in 2 Parts

February 20, 2013 Dispatches

By CRALAN KELDER

excerpt from the ongoing Failures Diary

i go to pick up my kid

at his crèche

that’s a fancy european word

for daycare

What Diamonds Can Do

February 13, 2013 Dispatches

By CLAIRE KEYES

Some can write poetry
on glass windows like Sophia Hawthorne
at the Old Manse with her wedding ring.
I’m told this was common in the 19th century.
But, for me, reading it was like finding a note in a bottle
picked up on the beach. I felt a kind of awe.

Drawing Snow

February 6, 2013 Dispatches

By CURTIS BAUER

There is a bend to everything.

Edges melt into curves like winter

and then spring, snow sways from

white to gray, powder to crust

and too many dialects make noise

Spices, Butter, and Earth

January 30, 2013 Dispatches

By LEE GULYAS

The chicken vendor’s stacked cages combine manure and death. Flatbread browning in the baker’s oven wafts smoke and flour. Metallic hints of thrown-out bean cans, misty exhaust of diesel trucks, heady tangs of eucalyptus trees. Even from inside our house the smell of fire is usual, from water pipes for smoking dried fruit and tobacco, whiffs of the neighbor’s incense, a sniff of matches and candles each time the electricity blacks out. Once we watched neighborhood kids chase after a rolling tire set afire, orbiting whirls of black and flame until the blaze consumed the tire, which wobbled in circles, then lay motionless on the ground. Children watched while acrid plumes of soot spread, lingering bitterness infusing the air.

The Road to Thunder Bay, Pt. 3

January 23, 2013 Dispatches

By JAMES A. GILL

This is the final installment part of a three-part dispatch. Pt. 1 and Pt. 2 can be found on The Common’s website.

The first order of business was to find the source of the leak. I went downstairs to the parking lot and started the car. Water pooled on the ground in the time it took me to get out and raise the hood. Finally, I nailed it down to a blown intake gasket. A spot about six inches long between the engine head and the intake manifold that bled water and antifreeze.

Arlington House, Maitland, Florida

January 23, 2013 Dispatches

By VANESSA BLAKESLEE

My writing room faces the backyard of my condo, and a steep embankment lined with lush, subtropical vegetation. Hidden beneath the embankment runs a stream—sometimes the water is churning and alive, rushing toward the lake a hundred yards distant. In the warmer months, ibis, herons, and other gawky water birds wade and dive, the stream their hunting ground; through the plantation shutters, I’ll pause from typing to glimpse one of these tall creatures perched patiently atop the bank, surveying its lunch prospects.

Brother, Three Steps from Cipro

January 16, 2013 Dispatches

By OPHELIA HU

Shick-a-shawing down Linea A, three stops from Cipro, Rome, I overheard a violin poorly played. Now and again, I curse my perfect pitch. A quarter tone drawled between D and D#, pulled headlong from a heavy-held bow like a dead rabbit from a hat. It was a nuisance. But I looked over to behold a blue-eyed boy crowned with thick brown hair and matching freckles.

Off-Season

January 9, 2013 Dispatches

By DEBRA S. LEVY

When we first moved to Ludington we spent days on the beach wandering along the sandy shores that stretched north to Manistee, south to Pentwater. Even in winter, when all the Fudgies (as tourists are known up north) had left town, having migrated to points south, we got out and hiked the hard-packed frozen beach, which provided a firm footing rather than the summer’s soft, fatiguing sand. But we had to cut against the strong gusts off Lake Michigan, and sometimes it was all we could do to walk upright, gripping our woolen caps over our red, nearly frostbitten ears. We spit grains of sand out and hunkered down, pushing against the wind.