The Year in Dispatches, Prose

Looking back on a year of dispatches, I’m proud to report that we’ve had essays from five continents. I heard from writers in places both famous and obscure, as well as some remote areas that were unknown to me. More than once, I found myself zooming in on Google maps, trying to get a glimpse of the locations described. My hope is that some of this year’s dispatches inspired the same curiosity in you. Here are a few highlights from throughout the year, ones you may have missed the first time the around:

Samantha Ender confronts a snake in Rwanda;

Aaron Gilbreath forages for vintage bottles in the Californian desert;

Noreen McAuliffe dissects fish in Mongolia;

Elizabeth Abbott inspects a war zone in Balad Ruz, Iraq;

and finally, Julian Hoffman finds a birding bridge between Greece’s Prespa Lakes and Ottawa, Canada.

 

Photo from Flickr Creative Commons

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The Year in Dispatches, Prose

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Dispatch: Two Poems

SHANLEY POOLE
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 // this effervescent temporary, here / with the bob-tailed cat // and a hundred hornet nests.

Fathom

SARA RYAN
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.

Glass: Five Sonnets

MONIKA CASSEL
In ’87 I see guardsmen walk their AK-47s / on the platforms. The trains slow down but never stop. I think, / my mother was born in such a different Germany, but this is true for everyone / —so why can’t I stop looking?