Dispatches

Bless These Backs

By MICHELLE CASTLEBERRY

This feature is part of our print and online portfolio of writing from the immigrant farmworker community. Read more online or in Issue 26.

Buckets of freshly picked apples

Part of a day’s harvest, 1985.


Bradley County, Arkansas
 

I stood behind the orthopedic specialist and watched the giant monitor where my MRI reports glowed. He traced the contours of my spine, his index finger waving back and forth down the screen. I had gotten his name after a months-long battle with neck and back pain. What started as fire and numbness in my right arm grew into a welter of spasm and neuropathy. This doctor was known as an oracle of back pain. He bragged of being able to guess how people used their bodies just from reading his screens.

The exhaustion of having a nameless, and, therefore, untreatable problem was eroding my spirit. I needed him to find the answer. As he squinted, he rattled off his wins, spotting the bone-wear patterns of golfers, softball players, fiddlers, and software developers. He stopped to identify the small bumps on each vertebra: bone spurs. It felt like he was stalling. Had I stumped him?           

Bless These Backs
Read more...

The Bee-Eaters

By GEORGINA PARFITT

Liverpool

The teeth of the excavator are wet. The cage opens, hovers, and grips a mouthful—some floor, some outer wall, some window frame, the glass disappearing with a tiny, tinkling sound.

Now, suddenly, the bedroom of the upstairs flat is revealed. A ragged cut-away, leaving just one perfect wall, wallpapered. Poppies on a purple field. The room, when it was a room, was probably small and ordinary; now, illuminated, it is the envy of all other rooms, the ultimate mezzanine. Light pours in from everywhere and the window frames blue sky.

The Bee-Eaters
Read more...

Into the Woods

By ANNE P. BEATTY

person with an orange bag walking through the dirt paths in a sun-spotted forest

Stone Mountain, North Carolina

A mile into the woods, I am always slightly afraid. Fear’s lace knots the cuff of an otherwise lovely afternoon. Nights, when I peek out of the tent, the moon is a bright friend too far away to help.

Into the Woods
Read more...

Two Poems by Michael Mercurio

By MICHAEL MERCURIO

 

Trees and Field

Providence, RI

Existential Field Notes: Diner

            If secrets are transmitted here
            no neon will say, just the same
            on-unless-it’s-off messages of
            abundance. Bottomless coffee,
            sure, and five pages of menu —

Two Poems by Michael Mercurio
Read more...

Four Country Sonnets (with Attachments)

By G.G. HARROW

Image of the Cumberland Gap Tunnel

Eastern Kentucky

After Terrance Hayes and Wanda Coleman


Attachment 1

country music is Black — indigenous — immigrant — almost successfully paved over — i made these poems from 36 common words in top-selling country songs since the ’90s according to a concert ticket corporation

Four Country Sonnets (with Attachments)
Read more...

Wonder

By DARLENE WEST

A black bear faces the camera close-up and head-on. Its eyes glow white. The image was taken in black-and-white night vision. The frame indicates that it was captured at 12:34 AM on September 26, 2019. The upper-right corner indicates the temperature and moon phase.

British Columbia, Canada     

In the mornings, I like to follow our border collie on his nose-to-the-ground rounds: out to the creek at the edge of our land; up to the vegetable garden near the foothills; across the back yard. Sometimes, the hair on the back of his neck stands up.  

Our farm land in southern British Columbia borders a mountainous wilderness. My husband and I find curiosities on our property all the time: peaches picked from our trees; tunnels under our fences; grape cluster stems, cleaned of berries. Now and then, feeding our fascination with the unknown: strips of grass, chiseled out of the lawn, coiled like jelly rolls. What roams around here at night after we turn out the lights? 

Wonder
Read more...