Nonfiction – Ecotone

Image of Hong Kong buildings near street level

Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City

Let’s begin here: on the sand. Or, rather, on the slabs of wood above the sand. On June 26, 1870, the Atlantic City boardwalk opened to the public. Sixteen years earlier, the first tourist train had arrived on the newly…

Nonfiction – Issue 25

Abstract image of house silhouettes on a hill

A House in Karachi

Rafia Zakaria

It sits on a hill—a fact that does not, in most places, distinguish a house as anything beyond ordinary. But it does in Karachi, which is in large part a flat city, squat and sprawling and a bit surly on…

Nonfiction – Issue 25

White-on-gray concentric rings resembling a tree's cross section

Witness Tree

Cameron Dezen Hammon

1. Suppose I start with a tree. It’s an old tree, tagged with neighborhood graffiti, wide as a linebacker. It’s where we met to sing hymns and pray before heading out into the night to find homeless people and sex workers,

Nonfiction – Issue 25

Close-up image of lines and numbers used for measurement

Wind

Rachel Z. Arndt

When lightning hits water, the electricity spreads outward across the surface. The mast of our boat was a problem much the way a lone tree is: with its tendrils of positive charge, it called to the polarized clouds, literally reaching…

Nonfiction – Issue 24

Monsoon and Peacock

Aimee Nezhukumatathil

What monsoon can do is give you sweetness in spite of the heavy wet. Even when it rains in Kerala, India, people still ride their colorful scooters, and some even carry a friend or a love along with them. If…

Nonfiction – Issue 24

•Movements

Ellie A. Rogers

A poet learning the cello explores the interactions between body and mind, imagination and discipline.

Nonfiction – Issue 24

Snowflake No. 1

Andrea Mummert Puccini

My mom’s mother, my Oma, knitted, crocheted, embroidered, and sewed skillfully. In the years I knew her, she spent evenings watching television news programs with my Opa, always working a project in her hands and lap. My mom never learned…

Nonfiction – Issue 24

Illustration from The Birds of North America, John James Audubon and John T. Bowen, New York: J.B. Chevalier 1840–1844, in the public domain

The Hornpipe and the Rake

Ben Miller

A husband considers the bucolic couple on the decorative plates he and his wife purchased early in their marriage, and meditates on the work of a rewarding partnership.