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Stingray

February 13, 2019 Dispatches

Little Bay, New Zealand

Everyone wears white here. Girls with white dogs in their arms rush towards the water. Women smear white ointments across the backs of their knees. Swimmers crouch over white caps.

Friends have gathered halfway up the beach, my father’s friends. Beside him sits a woman who was once so beautiful she was named the Rag Queen and transported on a float through the city. They crowd together under the Pohutukawa trees, the family and the extended family visiting from Europe. She waves to me. From across the sand I hear my father say “water lilies”…

Cirque of Dreams

January 2, 2019 Dispatches

By LINDA KEYES

Annapurna Sanctuary, Nepal

In mid-May 1999, alone on my last morning in the Annapurna Sanctuary, I tramped along the moraine below Annapurna Base Camp. The sun reflected off Machapuchare, the distinctive fish tail peak, at the bottom of the valley. Tharpu Chuli flanked me on the left, its 6000 meter crown glistening with fresh snow. No clouds covered Annapurna’s summits behind me or obscured the immense sky. The trail meandered from 13,500 feet to 12,000 feet. The low-oxygen air, like a drug, rendered the sapphire sky in vivid contrast to the silver cliffs, the white snow, and the wild crocuses that burst from south-facing patches in happy pink dots.

Holiday in Queens

December 19, 2018 Dispatches

By SUSAN HARLAN

Queens, New York

1. On the W, December 23

When I’m back in the city and on the subway, I tend to look at my book or at my feet and the feet of other people. I note the different kinds of shoes, their colors and states of wear.

Today is December 23, so there are shopping bags by all the shoes, held fast between lower legs and sometimes kicked out of the way of people coming and going. Bags filled with brown boxes and shoe boxes and stacks of folded clothes.

I’m sitting down, and a man stands above me with his back to me. Under his left arm is a cardboard box that says 6H on the side in thick permanent marker. He never turns around, and I never see him, but I know that he lives in 6H.

A Cave for Mithra

December 12, 2018 Dispatches

By MOJGAN GHAZIRAD

When I heard ancient Iranians worshipped Mithra in subterranean caverns, my first reaction was: why would anyone worship Mithra in total darkness? Mithra, the god of heavenly light, who goes over the earth, all her breadth over, after the setting of the sun, touches both ends of this wide, round earth, whose ends lie afar, and surveys everything that is between the earth and the heavens.[1] In Mithraic belief, the God Mithra slays a bull to move the world and enlighten it with love. Followers pray and purify their souls in order to ascend to their heavenly place of origin.

Rustic Impression

November 21, 2018 Dispatches

By SUSAN COMNINOS

This poem is an ekphrastic response to the above painting, Chickens!, by Marion Clarke.

Near the Mountains of Mourne, County Down, Northern Ireland

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The First Day of Fall

November 7, 2018 Dispatches

By SHANE CASHMAN

Highland Falls, NY

A black ant walks across the kitchen counter and I try to flick it away. It dodges my finger, but it’s miscalculated how close it is to the edge and falls off the cliff of the counter and into the dog bowl. It struggles to swim. The ant is dying the way I always die in my worst dreams. In nightmares I sink to the bottom of the lake near my childhood home.

It Was a Yellow-Billed Cuckoo

October 24, 2018 Dispatches

By JOANNA BRICHETTO

Couchville Cedar Glade State Natural Area, Davidson County, Tennessee

My mom has moved to a “senior community” a long drive from my house, but a short drive to my favorite cedar glade. Last night, I slept on the sofa so I could start a hike before dawn. Her new key takes some fiddling, but I sneak outside to meet black sky.

A Dodge pickup tails me hard on new asphalt for new subdivisions (so many) and old pasture (not so many), but when he turns toward the Interstate, I turn away. Pink begins to glow through my open window.

Hot Potato

October 10, 2018 Dispatches

By LEATH TONINO

Colorado Springs, Colorado

His business card is cut from the corner of an old photo. One side is the chopped image of a carpeted floor, a screen door, a chubby toddler’s left arm and hand. I flip the card over.

Dream Ladders

July 4, 2018 Dispatches

By MATTHEW SCHULTZ

Israel and Palestine

The story of the Immovable Ladder is this: it was left on a balcony of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem by a careless mason in 1750 and has sat there ever since. The six orders of monks, in whose ruthless stewardship the church is kept, have divided the church into blocks of turf, which they guard with fervor, and sometimes with fists. It’s unclear to which sect the balcony (and by extension, the ladder) belongs. Any attempt to answer that question would be a threat to the delicate status quo that keeps the monkish violence at bay. And so the ladder sits. Undisturbed.

Non-Native

June 20, 2018 Dispatches

By CATE LYCURGUS

Tolowa Dunes State Park, California

Sandy showed us how. She placed the shovel’s tip a few inches from a tuft’s base. Angled the handle back a bit, just enough to loosen the grass before she lowered, hand-pulling. This way, she explained, down to the source. Awards went to the biggest pile, longest root (you cannot burn grass off the dunes; the network just shoots back again), cleanest area too. Tawny tips waved in small breeze from the lagoon, off the lip of sea. But the grass is pretty, C said, and somebody murmured, agreeing. He traced the rake in arcs, looking down, but couldn’t swirl it far. European beachgrass (Ammophila arenaria) grows in clumps from rhizomes that spread four meters each year, so it’s no surprise beachgrass defines large stretches of Pacific coast. Pretty till you get a spine in your glove, E admitted, wincing. Until you get down close.

All posts tagged: Dispatch

Stingray

Cirque of Dreams

Holiday in Queens

A Cave for Mithra

Rustic Impression

The First Day of Fall

It Was a Yellow-Billed Cuckoo

Hot Potato

Dream Ladders

Non-Native

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