✧☾✧

​

​

With a breadth of subject matter, tone, and style, the collection of writing below is full of that somatic bravery that compels us to step outside and go somewhere new—into 2024’s double-edged spring—to put our claws in the earth, release “energy like warm breath / wasted in New York City winter” (Giancarlo Malchiodi).

New York is draped as always in all of its lore, rumor and rush, improvised music and manmade smoke. In California, fossils, redwoods, bay leaves, eucalyptus, “an April morning surrounded by ocean” (Katie Kemple), then the Golden Gate at dusk “consumed in a nuclear blaze” (Christian Paulisich).

In this issue: roads, bridges, ice melt, rain, new blood, illness, acceptance, and incongruous catastrophe. Many of these poems seem to me as though they were written by musing, nonaversive travelers; some in medias res. The turns they take feel mature, thought-out, and level, even in aftermath. These writers are conscious that being out in the world—especially as history and injury begin to stir and flow—comes with the cool beauty, near misses, and indifference of the everyday, in nature and culture. 
 

It’s such a pleasure to feel this way about the lines of poetry submitted to us: “the moment echoes in my vision even / after I drop my gaze to the wet concrete” (Samantha Schnell). Let’s walk through our cities and drive the long American backroads listening not only to songs, but also to the inner sounds of slowly storying thoughts and memories. Let’s reject numbness. Consider, for example, this sentiment from Stephen Kampa: “success is that for which we most / often atone.”

​

​

Thank you for reading,

​

M

​

​

​

​

​

​

​