Dispatches | Page 35

The Road to Thunder Bay, Pt. 1

October 24, 2012 Dispatches

This is the first part of a two-part Dispatch. Pt. 2 will be published online in November.

She slept for the first two hours of the trip, and when she woke up, the first thing she said was, “When we get back I want a divorce.” We were headed north with the hopes of going to Canada for no other reason than to say that we’d left the country. We’d decided on Thunder Bay, Ontario, because it was the closest destination across the border from our home in southern Illinois. And now, it seemed, the trip was doomed before we’d covered half the length of our own state.

Redressed

October 17, 2012 Dispatches

By KRISTA LEAHY

Cold beer, slippery hands, cigarettes no one (everyone) wanted,

Uneasy Sleep

October 10, 2012 Dispatches

By YVETTE CHRISTIANSE

Who was it that cried out? This cry,

a call that opens night

breaks out like a bird

breaking to greet dawn, or

the arrival of a high tide

that brings schools of fish

whose scales make the waters

glint and shimmer, glint and shimmer.

I Want What Comes After

October 3, 2012 Dispatches

By KELWYN SOLE

I want what comes after:

the first lifted bucket’s clang

once the rooster’s all crowed out,

a keen thirst for fresh water

as sequel to that sound

Where I Write

October 2, 2012 Dispatches

By NICOLA WALDRON

Writing in Place is a column in which authors published in our print and web pages tell us about their writing spaces.

I write in a glass-sided room, an addition to a 1950s brick bungalow, southern style. From the threshold that once led to the outdoors, it’s just one giant stride to my desk: space enough to tap at a keyboard, or lie down; for books and papers to breed, but not for dancing (a tiny tango when someone says yes).

Poetry in the New Prison

September 26, 2012 Dispatches

By KOBUS MOOLMAN

The guard at the gate smiles a toothless smile, and lightly taps the security boom open for me. We recognize each other; him with his brown uniform and heavy automatic tucked into a pocket on the front of his bullet-proof jacket, me with my rusted car and naive wave.

A Feria

September 19, 2012 Dispatches

By ROLF YNGVE

People would tell us to go see the big tree, and finally we flagged ourselves into one of the cheap cabs that go between Santa Maria del Tule and Oaxaca de Juarez on a set route. It was getting dark early under an overcast sky, the remains from tropical storm Ernesto, who had petered out after making some news in the Yucatan.

We found the big tree, a knob made for the grip of some great giant who could use it to lift the entire town – the entire state – out of the Mexican ground. It seemed to squat between the mayoral offices and the church. All the nearby buildings clung to earth like the homes of dwarves.

Retreat

September 11, 2012 Dispatches

By STEVIE RONNIE

Here are the ducks beaking for a mate,

ink leaks from a pen, a robin settles

in the birch’s oxter, the loch’s there

long and letting something to sea.

The Super Museum

September 5, 2012 Dispatches

By ROXANE GAY

We decided to go to Metropolis because we heard there was a giant Superman statue in the middle of town and even though it would be a long, hot drive, it felt like something kitschy and summery to do with the great swaths of time afforded by summer break. That none of us had a particular affinity for Superman made the folly of the trip even more amusing.

Buone Vacanze

August 1, 2012 Dispatches

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.