By KELLI ALLEN
Fair roof, dripping hall—these are names for sky where there should be only helmets left in the sand. We waste words mapping distance from one church to another, when religiosity is Fenrir in the north, and fresh birthed inkings, rooted in south sea brine. This is the way with us: Pythagorean stubbornness while we square the same four city blocks and discuss, too fast, our respective shames, walnuts quick meeting fire, and our first model ships.
By JINJIN XU
Every summer, we boarded the sleeper-train from Shanghai to Jiangxi and I squeezed through the crowds to claim the top bunk in a tight compartment shared with two strangers. The train always smelled of feet and instant noodles, and I loved the 16-hour journey because it was the only time I was allowed to have the MSG-flavored noodles. I rolled onto the scratchy bleached sheets that stuck to my sweaty body, and pressed my head against the cool metal bar to peek out the window, upside-down. Rocking to the train’s steady sway, I felt the soft, comforting crease of the cash my mother had sewn into my underwear against my thighs, in case of pickpockets. Meanwhile, she sat bent on the bottom bunk, purse clutched to chest, glancing up at my dangling head and legs, muttering, “Behave, you are a city girl.”
When we were young, white, and poor, we were handed dull machetes. At first light, in the back of half-ton grain trucks, we rode past the peppermint fields and the pear orchards of southern Oregon. We were strangers thrown together like dice in a cup. Some of us smoked quietly or blew the steam off the tops of take-out coffee containers. Others sipped whiskey from dented flasks or spit tobacco into plastic bottles. In ratty plaid shirts, torn dungarees, and worn out boots we looked the part of migrant workers. We would work twelve hours with half-hour lunch breaks that felt like no break at all. At the end of our shift we were older, more broken, and still in debt.
Finally, we sleep well, where the walls lean
with a drunk’s articulation. We wake
to homemade apple pies and hot cocoa.
We talk through a day of Rummy and three
Where am I, tracing lines in the bark
of an oak, a name
I have yet to forget?
It wasn’t love, this
half-attempt, my breathing in
the dust, the fire ants
lock-stepping down
My neighbor Geraldine
runs her sprinkler
like a public fountain.
The kids run through hollering
when all that dead grass
stabs their little plum feet,
By KIRK MICHAEL
This is the second part of a two-part Dispatch. The first part is available here.
I navigate by haphazard emotion, glancing over the wonderful cards that describe the provenance of the art, the investments of the rich across centuries. Willem Claesz Heda’s “Still Life with Oysters, a Silver Tazza, and Glassware” has what the title says it has and also a stamped checkerboard knife fitted for Old Dutch clutches, Schermerhorns buying up property on the docks of New York, New Amsterdam, monochrome banquet pieces slapped onto walls like flatscreens, overturned chalices and cutlery, tarnish and husk, the bitter translucent lemon dripping gold leaf citrus, succulent on the table, the pip as acidic as the pupils in my eyes.
By KIRK MICHAEL
This is the first part of a two-part Dispatch. The second part is available here.
“Beginnings are always delightful; the threshold is the place to pause.
My luggage trips over the pavement and the brownstone bella vista is dappled by trees I will soon learn are called Callery Pears, the ones that smell of semen, vulgar but pleasing, high on the listicle of “Disgusting Smelling New York Trees, Ranked,” a sign that I have finally arrived in Brooklyn in proper spring, the jizzy crush of it.
Delhi, Dharmshala, McLeod Ganj, Dharmkot. New friends and newer friends over masala chai. Deodar forest in rain. Mist rising. Monkeys on a cold tin roof, scorpions in the corridor, beetles inside clothes, slugs the size and shape of fallen leaves. Clean, spare, sharply elegant—Vipassana. Silence. Thank you for all the blessings, they came in handy.
On our first date he took me to a bar disguised as an apartment. Down a narrow alley (they call them laneways there), up a step, through a door marked “1A.” The room was small and nearly empty, all dark wood and white walls. A fire did its quiet work in one corner, its light gleaming on the unlabeled bottles that lined the shelves. He knew everyone, and the beautiful, tattooed bartenders spoke to me like family.
Don’t miss an issue! Subscribe to The Common.