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From the 17th Floor: To the Abraj and Back

October 12, 2012 Essays

I’d had grander plans for the day, of course, plans that involved walking through Bur Dubai, the old city, and the souks in Deira and visiting the beautiful Jumeirah Mosque, but the mosque tour was early, at 9:45, and nearly a 40 minute cab ride away… and then there was the heat. Even sitting in the shade in early morning, I was sweating.

No, we would not be setting foot on city sidewalks today. This was a blow to my touristic romanticism, my plan to experience the places where some semblance remained of the daily life that had characterized Dubai before the race to the top. Before the spectacular towers, malls, and hotels upon which superlatives are pinned.

From the Stone House: On Belonging

October 11, 2012 Essays

By MARTHA COOLEY

As the crow flies, Montereggio is perhaps a dozen kilometers from Castiglione del Terziere, my Italian home for a year. But Lunigiana—this northern part of Tuscany, between the Emilian plain and the Mediterranean Sea—is so hilly that I never know how many dizzying switchbacks a road might boast, thus how long it’ll take to get from A to B. (Or how many times en route our car will have to edge past another coming at it. Sometimes both vehicles must fold in their side-mirrors like wings so as to squeeze by.)

Uneasy Sleep

October 10, 2012 Dispatches

By YVETTE CHRISTIANSE

Who was it that cried out? This cry,

a call that opens night

breaks out like a bird

breaking to greet dawn, or

the arrival of a high tide

that brings schools of fish

whose scales make the waters

glint and shimmer, glint and shimmer.

Reading Place: Insiders & Outsiders

October 8, 2012 Essays, In House

By HANNAH GERSEN

I don’t think I understood the idea of a “love-hate relationship” until I moved to New York City. Over the years I have become one of those obnoxious people who talk constantly of leaving New York while at the same time shutting down all possible escape routes. Having grown up in a small town, I can tell you that this flavor of self-delusion is not unique to New York City, but perhaps it happens in greater numbers here, simply because New York is host to so many outsiders — outsiders who eventually become insiders.

Portrait of Our Death

October 5, 2012 Issue 04, Issue 04 Poetry, Poetry

By KATHERINE KILALEA

There were four of us, following a dirt road which began
in the foothills and went right up into the mountains
where a little cottage was waiting for us.

The Other One

October 5, 2012 Issue 04, Issue 04 Poetry, Poetry

By NADINE BOTHA

I could find a million nuances for how to improve me and influence my life,
as though, if I could just identify that one—like The One, the love—
I would know, it would know and that would be that.

Writer

October 5, 2012 Issue 04, Issue 04 Poetry, Poetry

By HAIDEE KRUGER

I keep my tools
hidden,
until the sun rasps
its black breath over
the suburbs. Only then

The Body

October 5, 2012 Issue 04, Issue 04 Poetry, Poetry

By HAIDEE KRUGER

the Body rearranges
itself around
the other.       points of entry and exit,
embraces.    Embraces.    the
thrill of skin.         density
surrenders to Liquid.         semen, blood,
mucous, milk.         the Body yields to