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Salamisim

May 1, 2024 Dispatches

A sepia-tone image showing a young girl with a ribbon in her hair smiling next to a piano, one hand affectionately resting on the edge of the lid. The wall above is adorned with elephants.

Photo courtesy of author.

Manila, Philippines

In the lanai’s half-light, a softened sun to my left and amber on the keys, I played the piano for my father who did not know the names of notes. I-bitin mo, he said in Tagalog, shrouded in incandescent glow as I shifted from one chord to the next, a nine-year-old on the cusp of competition learning how to cadence. And so, I slowed into suspension, this bitin near the end of the phrase—and all stakes hung in the balance like the last inhale of a life or the final somersault before the thunder of disappointment or applause.

Saturday

April 17, 2024 Dispatches

By HANNAH JANSEN

Rockport, ME

Saturday

At the laundromat the whir of machines,
whorled & busy, the pleasure & difficulty

of stillness Waiting, sockless, I aspire to be
the cross-legged woman reading a magazine,

Susan

March 20, 2024 Dispatches

By SARAH DUNPHY-LELII

Lake Katrine, NY

I visit with a friend as she works to empty her mother’s house, who died just days before Christmas, and each object holds a tiny piece of Susan. I come away with several treasures lovely (a hand knitted scarf, a clay donkey to hold my garlic) and practical (a metal frog for summer flower arranging, a switchplate for the guest bedroom).

This small home was itself a downsize, and these many items are the survivors of her mother’s own earlier culling, so are a little piecemeal, each one tasked with balancing an eager backstory on its tiny shoulders. More than two of anything inspires commentary, my attempt to make knowledge in place of the knowing I hadn’t sought earlier: She must have liked Edith Wharton or She had quite a collection, here. My friend’s own childhood artwork hangs in several places, and each flutters with a colored post-it; I’ve arrived too late for those.

Mala Beads

March 6, 2024 Dispatches

By MAW SHEIN WIN

Yucca Valley, California

When she wakes, I offer water. She sips from the glass. I ask if she needs more pillows behind her head. I look into her eyes and notice that she has deep blue lines that circle her almost black pupils. Why hadn’t I seen that before? I think of the nazars that I bought in Athens fifteen summers ago. Those glass amulets to ward off the evil eye were also called evil eyes. A source of protection against a malevolent gaze. Things make me choke, she says suddenly, then closes her eyes again.

I’m with my younger sister and my 89-year-old mother at a rental in Yucca Valley, California. It’s nearly 100 degrees outside, tumbleweeds and succulents outside the door. My sister and I drink cold water and blast the air con.

Ship Happens

February 21, 2024 Dispatches

By ELLIOT RAPPAPORT

the image of an ocean with an orange sunset in the background

At Sea

Each summer the cadets of Maine Maritime Academy put to sea with a crew of instructors aboard their eponymous training ship, State of Maine. Here, like medical students at a teaching hospital, they set about practicing the skills of their aspirational careers on a live patient—navigating, steering, chipping paint, avoiding collisions, and tending to a diesel plant whose thundering mass fills a room large enough for basketball. Everything is big on a ship like this, which sleeps 350 people and needs 30 feet of ocean just to stay afloat. In tanks below the living spaces there are 3,300 long tons of fuel and 770 tons of potable water. The anchors weigh 5 tons each, set out on chains with links fourteen inches across. An old Navy ship built for speed, not baggage, the State of Maine is slim and pointy at her ends, like a canoe. In a calm sea she moves with almost no feeling of displacement, just a low white-noise rumble of engines and the shoosh of water sliding by.

Some Syllables, Slurred

February 7, 2024 Dispatches

By ROSSANEE NURFARIDA
Translated from the Thai by NOH ANOTHAI

Bangkok, Thailand

Seven years ago…
My grandmother was ninety,
but didn’t know what a coup d’etat was
on that night the people had
their voices stolen from them.

An Ode to I-5

January 24, 2024 Dispatches

By JANICE LOBO SAPIGAO

I-5, California

I’ve driven up and down California via the Interstate-5 freeway countless times. There are many ways to find a way through its veins, but I am mostly familiar with the drive between the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles or San Diego. I’ve lived a lot of life in and between these three major cities in California, and even at age 36, I am still learning to appreciate the distance between NorCal and SoCal, as well as the static landscapes that I have spent hours gazing at intently.

Two Poems by David M. Brunson

December 13, 2023 Dispatches

By DAVID M. BRUNSON

Vertigo

Santiago, Chile

For over a month now, my wife and I have dangled extension cords
from our 26th-floor balcony to the neighbors’ apartment

because their landlord collects rent but refuses to pay the utility monopoly.
The girls cry when we have to disconnect, but we’ll be gone for a while,

plus there’s a chance of rain, and therefore, an electrical fire
in our 1000-person highrise. We saw one just last week. The all-volunteer

The Ghost of Jack Radovich

November 29, 2023 Dispatches, Farmworker

By TERESA B. WILSON-GUNN

Author's parents in a group photo from a Filipino immigrant labor camp

Photo from a labor camp for Filipino farmworkers. The author’s parents are in the center, holding her older brothers.

Mama saw her boss, Jack Radovich, standing in her row during a sweltering San Joaquin afternoon. She was picking table grapes alone when he suddenly appeared, several yards away, gazing off in the direction of the blue-gray Sierra mountains. She assumed he was surveying his vineyards, visiting his farmworkers like he aways did. He was a hardworking landowner, who usually let his young sons build and deliver the packing boxes with a beat-up, sunburnt pickup truck. The kind of boss who always seemed to know when the grape packers needed more boxes. He didn’t call out or turn toward her, but she hurried his way, eager to be the first one from her team to claim the boxes. Daddy was her foreman.

Fruit Tramps, Moving On

November 15, 2023 Dispatches

By JIM GUY, with ARONNE GUY

Oregon

A fruit tramp family of the 1930s stayed in many places for short periods of time. We arrived, picked the crop, and moved on. That’s why we were called tramps, nomads, and many other things not nearly as complimentary. Our shelters while picking could be the loft of a barn, a converted hen house, or a small sleeps-two tent. On occasion if you were in an especially nice place, you might have a cabin or a large canvas-covered dwelling with a wooden floor. If we had a place of permanency, it was the car or truck that took us to the next job: we might spend the winter in California or pick apples in Washington State. It was all dictated by the season. Packing and moving was as much a part of our life as picking the crop.

All posts tagged: Dispatch

Salamisim

Saturday

Susan

Mala Beads

Ship Happens

Some Syllables, Slurred

An Ode to I-5

Two Poems by David M. Brunson

The Ghost of Jack Radovich

Fruit Tramps, Moving On

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