Literary Nonfiction

A great many orchids, the endangered lady’s slipper for one, expend a portion of their energy creating pseudobulbs where they host ant colonies, because the formic acid ants spit at intruders gives the soil a pleasingly bitter pH. This is an example of myrmecophilia, a way of being in a love relationship with ants. Though …

This day ends in the kind of holiday where I feel knotted up in—remind me again who is the parasite and who the host? Hell-bind, strangleweed, beggarweed. A lot of people, no plants, no sky, in a small room where we tell each other how we are happy to be together. Hairweed, goldthread, devil’s-guts. A …

In a fascinating miCRo essay, Fee takes us on a tour of the microwave’s unexpected origin story.

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Story from Issue 22.1

The train curved around the mountains of West Virginia, and my father said to look out the window. He pointed to our right, and I saw the engine. Then he pointed to his left, and I saw the red caboose. “We’re one big circle,” he said. “I don’t know if we’re coming or going. If …

1 Pears fall to the yard, green bombs hitting green earth with a thud. Under the pear tree I read, journal, dance. I pet my calico cat, Rosie, and wave nets in the air attempting to catch butterflies. Down the hill from the pear tree are black raspberry bushes, empty of leaves and color in …

Although I have now lived inside the ivory tower for longer than I ever lived outside it, my arrival first felt like exile. That immigration seems like a far more dramatic passage than my journey from South Korea as an infant adoptee, though certainly the latter has inspired more curiosity. But I have no memory …