Dispatches | Page 43

The Balkan

May 18, 2011 Dispatches

The Balkan in my neighborhood, I give him small amounts of money a few
times a week, it’s not what you think. A lot of people do this. About his wife,
he tells me he has none. My daughter, he sees her smile a flash flood,
always gives her a cookie. His word is börek, translates as ‘savory pastry’
pronounced “boo-wreck”. For this I gladly give him money. Spinach and feta.
Bigger than your hand, hot from the oven. With meat or cheese, pasta layers,
flaky dough. He works 6 days a week. He was taking a nap in the park a few
years ago, we were there eating homemade sticky cake. I offer him some, he
rigorously declines. Does he recognise me? Was it inappropriate?

Boston Launch Event

May 17, 2011 Dispatches, News and Events

Event Date:

Wednesday, June 8, 2011 – 7:00pm

Location:

Porter Square Books

We’re celebrating the release of Issue 01 in Boston! Join us if you’re in the area on June 8th at Porter Square Books (Cambridge, MA) for readings by Ilan Stavans and Sabina Murray. The event starts at 7PM and is free & open to the public. Refreshments will be provided. For more information, please visit here.

Night Fishing, Devil’s Kitchen Lake

May 11, 2011 Dispatches

By JAMES A. GILL

—for Rodney Jones

After the accident, when I no longer walked with a cane, we met there at dusk. I hesitated stepping off the dock into the gently swaying boat, still unsure of the steel screwed into my bones, scared in that instant, like every other, of the infinite number of ways a person can die. I took my place in the hard plastic fishing seat, and by the time we reached the far side of the lake and tied onto the line of buoys near the spillway, full dark had come. We set our lines and did no more.

The Chosen Ones

May 4, 2011 Dispatches

By PETER JAY SHIPPY

When he was 12, he was voted
Most likely to become Satan’s spawn

By the other sixth graders at Gesù
Catholic School in Northy. Lucas

Extracts from the Ridiculous American: A Just Plain Strange One-Sided Correspondence

April 27, 2011 Dispatches

By JOCK DOUBLEDAY

AMSTERDAM

October 21, 1998

Dear Diary,

My 39th birthday was spent in the airport, but walking down Herengracht I thought, “Happy Birthday.” Not too excited being here. Looks like just another New York City to me. Of course, it’s dark. We’ll see what daylight brings.

Finishing Sequence

April 20, 2011 Dispatches

By CARRIE MEADOWS

Men in red vests enter in the wake of the crowd’s leaving,

their sneakers rustling hollow soda cups and corndog sleeves.

This is the dingy hush of half-eaten pretzels, half-empty

popcorn buckets. When the crew has finished clearing debris

Buttons

April 13, 2011 Dispatches

By JESSICA ADAMS

In a long, low building with a tin roof, people from this village turn clamshells into buttons. Beyond the broken windows lie middens of clamshells, punctuated with precise and uniform holes. The gravel mixes with broken shells and thick, pale unfinished buttons.

Archipelago

April 6, 2011 Dispatches

By IAN MACLELLAN

In Greece, people visit islands. There are a lot of islands to visit. They head for beaches, coastline, the sea, to lie on the shore and look out at the water. But to find an island, you should really look inland. The island is the thing behind you. Turn around.

On a small Cycladic island, a second home for me by marriage, I swelter by the beach. Idyllic, busy, and anonymous. A limited sense of context: a watery horizon; sand; shops, bars and restaurants. At 40°C in the shade, it’s all swimming costumes and ice cream and plastic toys.

How to Detangle a Bird Caught in Your Hair

April 1, 2011 Dispatches

By HOLLIE HARDY

First you have to have hair. This trend toward baldness negates the problem.

Once you have grown a luscious mane, gather images on your lion tongue: ripe peaches, sizzle of bacon, crisp campfire scent of an almost winter night, handful of rain or feathers or marbles, the details of sunset, and and fast cars. Weave your materials carefully. Remember that birds like shiny things. The colors and flavors you choose may affect the type of bird you lure into your hair-nest.

Native Ground

March 23, 2011 Dispatches

By AMY HASSINGER

I grew up in a suburb. Sub-: substitute, subservient, suboptimal, subordinate, substandard. Suburb: aesthetically, morally, culturally beneath the urb. Suburb: lesser than, not quite, almost, near but far. Suburb: the middle sibling of American municipalities, the generic neighborhood, where sidewalks and landscaped parks abound, where street widths reflect the dimensions of the average minivan, where children wander through barometrically-controlled environments, ogling the mass-produced outfits from The Limited and The Gap, concocting fantasies about their future, properly-attired selves, when they will no longer dwell in such a substandard place, but will graduate to the real life, the unsubordinate life: the life of the city, the life of the urb.