Dispatch | The Common

Damascene Dream

September 10, 2025 Dispatches

Anaheim, California, dreaming of Damascus, Syria — a place I have not been able to visit since the war began in 2011.

I had a dizzying dream last night. I picked up the phone, and called my grandma—my mom’s mom, the woman who raised me. She was laughing—I told her something about what I had been going through, I don’t remember what. I was being candid in a way that would be unthinkable in the real world; maybe I even told her about the ugly breakup with R. The warm acceptance on the other line astounded me. “Why don’t I call you more often?” I asked her.

“Wallah tayteh, I miss you, you should tell me everything.”

Dispatch from New Madrid, Missouri

August 27, 2025 Dispatches

By MADELINE SIMMS

New Madrid, Missouri

I. Mississippi River, Dec. 16, 1811

After midnight, cottonwoods are inconsequential teeth, ripped from the ground by the Mississippi River. An elm snaps like a bird’s neck: an egret. The current betrays every fluttering heart and rages on. A rock becomes sepulcher to the uprooted nest. The river could be less cruel, the winter, more forgiving. Someone could have conceived of this world, but for days, no one but a pair of swans bears witness to the earthquake. The strange earth frees itself into unimaginable fissures. The bank splits and pools into the tall prairie, the way a pail of milk might spill across an oak table. Even water will stain the strongest wood. Supposedly, there is quaking, waking what’s left of the neighbors, small animals that somehow survive. What is survival to the breathless that can’t forget? How long was the egret chick left flinching? There are traces of disruption here: feathers without blood, nests without eggs. Devoid of particular destination, another will roost again.

A Tour of America

August 13, 2025 Dispatches

By MORIEL ROTHMAN-ZECHER

A bearded man stands in front of a black background, looking toward the left.

Photo courtesy of Jules Weitz.

America

This afternoon I am well, thank you.

Walking down Main Street in Danville, KY.

The heavy wind so sensuous.

Last night I fell-

ated four different men back in

Philadelphia season lush and slippery

with time and leaves.

Keep your eyes to yourself, yid.

As a kid, I pledged only to engage

in onanism on special holidays.

Luckily, America.

Four Ways of Setting the Table

August 6, 2025 Dispatches

By CLARA CHIU

Photo of a long wooden table with chairs. Plants in the background

Photo courtesy of author.

Amherst, Massachusetts

I. Tablecloth Winter

We are holding the edges of the fabric,
throwing the center into the air.
& even in dusk this cloth
billowing over our heads
makes a souvenir of home:
mother & child in snowglobe.
Yet we are warm here, beneath
this dome, & what light slips through
drapes the dining room white.

Before They Traded Devers

July 30, 2025 Dispatches

By AIDAN COOPER

Photo courtesy of author.

Boston, MA
After Frank O’Hara

Father’s Day, it’s 8 a.m. & I’m late on the road
to Boston because I drooled too much sleeping
I’m driving to a Red Sox game, yes I’ll go
because my dad at one point liked the pitcher
& the tank’s too full to not go

when I reach the MFA beehiving with students
I wonder what’s on & it’s Van Gogh’s Roulin Family Portraits
& I want to park there in case I have time to peruse
but it’s 50 bucks & I’m seeing my family anyway
so I circle Huntington until I find an empty spot
on Parker & it’s Sunday so I’m off the hook
& I don’t thank God pay a thing

Florida Poems

July 2, 2025 Dispatches

By EDWARD SAMBRANO III

Photos courtesy of author.

Florida

After the Storm
(after Donald Justice)

I will die in Portland on an overcast day,
The Willamette River mirroring clouds’
Bleak forecast and strangers not forgetting—
Not this time—designer raincoats in their closets.
They will leave for work barely in time
To catch their railcars. It will happen

On a day like today. Florida’s winter
Brings the satisfaction of sunlit goosebumps
As I read on the veranda wondering whether
To retrieve a sweater. I’m learning
Of life’s many versions of triviality,
Which merely manage to repeat themselves.

Farewell to Pictou County, N.S.

June 17, 2025 Dispatches

By COURTNEY BUDER

Pictou County, Nova Scotia, Canada

Lint blue thunder flavors the memory. The waves are enormous, curling up high and mighty like Caribou antlers. In hindsight: Why are we at the beach during a thunderstorm? But back then, in all of my five year old wisdom: The water is so warm and excited to see me.

The power went out for three days during one hurricane or another. My niece was only a baby, my mom and sister murmuring about warming the milk. Everybody crowded together onto a bed, every blanket in the house employed. I thought it was wonderful. I remember standing in the middle of the street, the wind tearing straight through me. I watched my red hat get sucked up and away into the grey, watched trees flail, calm as a clam, as a strange and lonely little girl transfixed, like watching a snow globe from the inside. The Ship Hector crept up onto Caladh Avenue and my mother finally burned the candle. Life went on.

Dispatch: Two Poems

June 4, 2025 Dispatches

By SHANLEY POOLE

a broken down, rusty car faces out toward a lightly forested, sunny, and hilly landscape.

Photo courtesy of author.

Hot Springs, North Carolina

A Mathematical Formula for Continuing

I’m asking for a new geography,
something beyond the spiritual.

Tell me again, about that first
drive up Appalachian slopes

how you knew on sight these hills
could be home. I want

Fathom

May 21, 2025 Dispatches

By SARA RYAN

statue of poseidon

Norfolk, Virginia/Virginia Beach, Virginia

When the whales wash up on shore, my friend grieves. I feel it too, but it feels further away. Deep in me, treading water, legs furiously churning under the surface. The first whale washes up on the oceanfront, just off the boardwalk. People drive out to stare at it. Its dark wet form deflates into the sand. I don’t drive to find it but think of it all day.

I scroll through the Facebook comments that claim it’s all the fault of the offshore windmills, the sonic waves mapping the ocean floor pummeling through the ocean. Everybody seems to have watched the same hoax-y documentary funded by the oil industry. But of course, it’s the boats. The whales scarred and torn up by container ships. 165,000 tons of steel running into migration paths.