Welp, when lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d, we weren’t trying to smell them through DIY-bandana face masks while maintaining twelve-foot-diameter personal space bubbles. This shit got hella real and then proceeded to fling itself into our collective fan.
The poems and stories here in our one-hundred-and-eighth issue brought some sparkle to our gloomy days, and we hope they’ll do the same for you. Take a leap with Sarah Sexton’s statuesque protagonist and sing the sheep electric with AR Dugan’s replicant. Ride a Sisyphean ouroboros with P.K. Read, look down on Leatherface with Anne Gresham, and explore the final frontier with Deborah P Kolodji before trying on a new (out)look with Chris Stanton. Don’t leave without admiring the organic fusion cover art of Ajay Kumar (Jordan) Singh.
Take care of yourself and your loved ones. Send us some of your words. We’ll be back with another issue in July, because the more things change, the more we stay the weird.
L.R. Harvey
‘And let them all be lovers of the light,
and throw themselves against all sources of
it, searching for a fix — and when they hit
the chilly concrete stoop, all jumbled up
in disarray, let them forget their past
mistakes and try again, again, till they lay
in little furry lumps, their little arms crossed,
scattered around the faded Welcome mat.’
It’s something like this — I just can’t remember if
this was the day when God created men or moths —
or maybe it was possums, like the one
my front-left tire just kissed goodnight, tucked in
to sleep between
the curving yellow lines.
L.R. HARVEY lives in Chattanooga, TN., where teaches English and writes poetry. He has been widely published, and his most recent work appears in The Write Launch, The Tennessee Magazine, and After the Pause.
We are as excited as rats in a donut shop to present our Pushcart Prize nominees for this year.
Here they are, in alphabetical order:
Grace Elizabeth Butler, “The Wolf Who Was Late” (fiction)
Ashley Roth, “Adolescent” (fiction)
Ezra Solway, “Birthday 10” (poem)
Joshua Storrs, “A Statue of a Crazed Horse” (fiction)
Lauren Tivey, “Zora and the Zombie” (poem)
Congratulations to Grace, Ashley, Ezra, Joshua, and Lauren, and a huge thank you to all our contributors and everyone who has submitted work to us this year. We literally wouldn’t exist without you.
And thank YOU, person reading this right now, for taking an interest in the arts and being generally awesome. Treat yourself to a donut.
