Issue #59

In Issue #59, the art and writing illuminate our current world through fragmentation, a kaleidoscope of themes and images upended. Reflective of recent events and situations, what we know to be true has been warped.

Romana Iorga’s poetry portfolio explores imagery within the spaces of what’s been forgotten or made different, how to quantify a self in a world that begs for meaning and narrative. “When I first learned the word in English, I thought buildings had stories because they held people. The taller the building, the more elaborate its stories.” From mathematics to Shakespeare, we are offered a unique voice that walks us through the towns of what could be so and what’s imagined, at times dispelling the distance between.

In Mike Wilson’s “The Memory Unit,” he offers insight into a family’s chronicled history with dementia as readers follow his aunt’s descent into loss and forgetfulness, coupled with the unconditional love of family. “And though she doesn’t feel like Aunt Jo, has no idea who we are, she feels our love. She hugs us back.”

Our fiction selection features “Hannie’s House” by Kimm Brockett Stammen. “Hannie’s House” alternates between differing memories of the same moment. A daughter grapples with her mother’s declining health, then we pivot to the mother’s perspective. “Why are you like this, why am I like this,” it begs, forces us to painfully confront the truth of one’s past and current situation.

And it is this we are left asking: within the chaos of our current state, what arises when the past cannot always be recalled, nor the future prophesied—is it the self, this moment? What matters?

Best to you all–
Rebecca & Ashley