Dispatches | Page 6 | The Common

Histories

July 28, 2021 Dispatches

Austin, Texas

I once dated a bull rider, which is very interesting, I still find. He was at the time no longer a bull rider, he had rather been one in his youth, but this lingered, as you might expect. This was in a part of the country where bull riders are not so rare as they are in the northeast, though still rare enough for people to lean forward when they hear. The only time he visited with my family we played a board game where everyone shouts out words, and would you believe a card came up “Things You Can Ride.” Even this cosmic wink could not keep together two with only the two-step in common. But the two-step itself married me to rambling dancehalls for joyful months after, a sweating Dos Equis in one hand and the other free for the taking.

64-West & KY State Fair

June 16, 2021 Dispatches, Poetry

By D.S. WALDMAN

Kentucky, United States

64-West
After Calvino

When you ride a long time in the private
night of your pickup cab
you enter eventually
into a desire you cannot name a greater dark
that wants only what

Anticipating, Zebra Finches

June 2, 2021 Dispatches

By JOHN KINSELLA

Avon Valley, Western Australia

Just below, a roo doe digs into the softest
soil it can find — avoiding rocks — to make
a hollow for itself and the joey heavy in its pouch;
it lifts, digs, turns drops lifts digs turns drops.

How Living Looks

May 5, 2021 Dispatches

By ARIEL CHU

Taipei, Taiwan, December 2020

The three of us—Frances, Jay, and I—live in this rain-slick city, concrete buildings stained with runoff. At night, the streets stretch like black pools, glossy with reflected traffic lights. We stumble around half-closed night markets with our snapped umbrellas and damp socks. Our pockets weighted with bruised change, we eat charred oyster mushrooms crusted with cumin and rose salt, waiting out the rain under fluorescent storefront awnings.

E.A. Robinson Leaves by Rail

February 3, 2021 Dispatches

By ABBIE KIEFER

Gardiner, Maine

Raw granite and brick, hip roof like a helmet. At its height, it hummed: seventeen trains daily, lumbering in along the river. I imagine E.A. here with his ticket and his trunk. With his back to the brick, listening for a whistle.

Now the depot is a cannabis dispensary. They keep records in the ticket booth, make brownies in the basement. Preservationists call this adaptive reuse.

Cihu

January 6, 2021 Dispatches

By ADAM DALVA

Cihu Memorial Sculpture Park, Taiwan

Providence

December 9, 2020 Dispatches

By DARIEN HSU GEE

Kamuela, Island of Hawaiʻi

July on South St. (AEAE)

November 18, 2020 Dispatches

By NICK MAIONE

Northampton, MA

I open the doors and windows and shut off the lights.
For a while I play tunes on the fiddle
shirtless in my dark house. I love doing this.
For the first time all day I am not at home.
For the first time since the last time
my body is the same size as my flesh.
The only home I have is finally mine
and there is a breeze.

On Halloween

November 4, 2020 Dispatches, Translation

By VASYL LOZYNSKY

Translated by the author and JESSICA ZYCHOWICZ

Hudson, NY

I feel greedy, I have a frog in my throat because of this
expensive beer. I start to ask around, like a detective,
and immediately get some info
from the writer sitting at our table nearby,
whom I got to know just now.
The house of Ashbery has likely mahogany doors facing
the square, probably where city hall is.
I don’t even think about visiting without letting
someone know first. I stop and read a few poems in a bookshop.
You won’t repeat the jokes, I say,
you’ll go around to all the apartments on Halloween
with pumpkins, like I used to do
in my childhood, but then the main thing was trick or treat,
not to force someone for an interview or a photograph.

Opłatek

August 26, 2020 Dispatches

By JANNETT MATUSIAK

Denver, Colorado

At the second hospital in as many days, my father starts seeing crows. He points at the nurses’ station with his chin, speaks in perfect Polish, the kind I haven’t heard him speak in decades. His brain lights up momentarily with the speed and language of the young man he was when he first came to America, before Multiple Sclerosis and age started robbing his body. My father tells me to look, look, look. Tells me the roof is so thin, that the small one is looking for its nest. I can tell by his eyes he really sees it. He’s hallucinating, I say. I’m startled, then startled a second time when the nurse and doctor don’t think much of it. They tell me it’s ICU psychosis, the lack of sleep and all the beeping.

All posts tagged: Dispatches

Histories

64-West & KY State Fair

Anticipating, Zebra Finches

How Living Looks

E.A. Robinson Leaves by Rail

Cihu

Providence

July on South St. (AEAE)

On Halloween

Opłatek

Discover the extraordinary in The Common.