Dispatch | The Common

Rocket City Rising

May 20, 2026 Dispatches

Huntsville, Alabama

The news came on a Tuesday: U.S. Space Command was moving to Huntsville. The headlines said Redstone Arsenal wins the bid, but that word wins sat strange in my mouth. In the breakroom, someone printed the article and pinned it to the bulletin board above the coffee pot. The photo showed the gates of Redstone shining in the morning sun, a soldier standing guard beside the sign.

Outside my office window, trucks rumbled past loaded with pallets of equipment. The air always smelled faintly of dust and jet fuel. I thought about how this patch of land in northern Alabama, once a cotton field, then a proving ground, then a missile test site, was about to become home to something even bigger.

Before Times

May 6, 2026 Dispatches

By JENNIFER CHRISTGAU AQUINO

Seattle, Washington

We walk sixteen thousand steps in shopping bags and Patagonia rain jackets through the never-rain, using Google maps to navigate your hometown. I talk incessantly about my lost life while you take us down wrong turns, saying, You will get there. At a paper maps store, we pull out drawers of flattened Earth. Of streets in Seville and Oslo, as if life can be laid out and easily navigated. More than once I say, Wouldn’t it be nice to travel there.

Two Poems by Erica Ehrenberg

April 1, 2026 Dispatches

By ERICA EHRENBERG

Art by Jonathan Ehrenberg

Dutch Blitz

March 4, 2026 Dispatches

By CIGAN VALENTINE

Cajon del Maipo, Santiago, Chile

It is Easter weekend in a Catholic majority country. It’s Friday, and it feels like the whole world is counting down and holding its breath, waiting for a miracle they know will always come. Out here, though, Catholicism feels like a relic, a prop in an old mountain town with one main square. Something out of the Wild West, if such existed in Latin America. Old men sit around the square selling handmade tiles, reselling fake name-brand sports gear. A fine layer of dust covers everything.

I/Teh Ran

February 18, 2026 Dispatches

By SARVIN PARVIZ

woman holding a sheet in front of the mountains

Photo courtesy of the author.

Tehran, Diaspora

I moved to the U.S. for a creative writing program with a luggage full of must-haves and gifts, to survive the at-once costs with one paycheck, memorabilia from each friend and close relatives to hold, on days of unbelonging and loss, to feel the connection to the ground back to a place. The largest collection of belongings is in my phone. More than twenty thousand photos of food on the table (always more than one plate), streets of Tehran at night through the car window, wet and bright after rain, harmonious, unlike the dust and chaos of the day. My daisy covered shoes on the curb, friends singing, tapping on the table, hugging, running all the way to the top of a hill. When I moved, the photos became similar, screen shots of Facetime or Zoom calls, us in squares next to each other, our joy breaking out of the frame, heart emojis flying, everyone laughing.

Three Poems by Mary Angelino

February 4, 2026 Dispatches, Poetry

By MARY ANGELINO

A sculpture bunny leaning against a book

#giftinspo for Cottagecore Girls

—Dispatch from Santa Clarita, California,
nowhere near a cozy forest cottage, August, 2025

Nose heavenward, ears like capsized canoes,
I unbox a silver-gray rabbit, painted to look

metal and heavy. My new useless
bookend. Plastic. Stiff and unsteady—

I would have missed it on a shelf, out shopping
like people used to do, maybe held its weight

Cape May, midsummer

January 21, 2026 Dispatches

By EVELYN MAGUIRE

Photo by Hannah Stone

Cape May, NJ

Some things we understand before we’ve ever touched them. I swallowed a poppyseed and saw you in my dreams. Summer sweltered. Sweat marked round my ribs, beating with two hearts. Boiled eggs, sharp chives, mayo, cayenne, dill, salt. Summer of salt: we retreat to the seaside of my childhood, rocky and full of my mother’s egg salad.

Danish Dispatch

January 7, 2026 Dispatches

By ALEX BEHM

Copenhagen, Denmark

My grandfather sits in a recliner and watches infomercials on television. It is 2:57 in the afternoon on an American Sunday and a man wearing a cheap suit tries selling him the New King James Version Bible in twelve parts on CD.

I call from Copenhagen where the time is 8:57pm and the sun has already set. An electronic operator speaks words in Danish I cannot decipher before the static spindles through air and across several oceans until my grandfather picks up his landline.

Harmony Presbyterian Church, he says into the phone. This is his greeting. No Hello or Can I help you? He has no caller ID and does this to defend himself against telemarketers. He tells me, If you answer with the name of a church, they are not allowed to sell you anything, and then purses his lips and nods his head one time, each time he says this.

The Most-Read Pieces of 2025

December 22, 2025 News and Events

2025 was a momentous year for The Common: our fifteenth anniversary, our 30th issue, even a major motion picture based on a story in the magazine. We’re more grateful than ever for our readers, contributors, donors, and friends.

Before we close out this busy year of publishing, we wanted to take a moment to reflect on the unique, resonant, and transporting pieces that made 2025 memorable. The Common published 269 contributors this year. Below, you can browse a list of the ten most-read new pieces of 2025 to get a taste of what left an impact on readers.

Candy and Layer Cake: Zack Strait in Conversation with Richard Siken (and Five Poems)

“The whole world seemed like a five-paragraph essay but poetry rubbed against that. It was contrary and rebellious. That summer it rained a lot, and hard. We had a 100-year flood. It washed out bridges. I saw a house on the edge of a swollen wash lose its backyard and then get swept away. I didn’t want to talk about it, I wanted to make somebody feel it. I started writing every day. I was very bad at it. ”

—Richard Siken

The Ground That Walks

December 17, 2025 Dispatches

By ALAA ALQAISI

Gaza, Palestine

We stepped out with our eyes uncovered.
Gaza kept looking through them—
green tanks asleep on roofs, a stubborn gull,
water heavy with scales at dawn.

Nothing in us chose the hinges to slacken.
The latch turned without our hands.
Papers practiced the border’s breath.
On the bus, the glass held us—
a pond that would not name who stays.

All posts tagged: Dispatch

Rocket City Rising

Before Times

Two Poems by Erica Ehrenberg

Dutch Blitz

I/Teh Ran

Three Poems by Mary Angelino

Cape May, midsummer

Danish Dispatch

The Most-Read Pieces of 2025

The Ground That Walks

Discover the extraordinary in The Common.

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