Issue #60

Seasons come and go, and the rise and fall of new winds bring change. The birds migrate for warmth, we adjust to our mounting pressures of growth, and time’s gradual passing becomes apparent with each vibrant array of flowers unleashed in spring. In Issue #60, reminders of the past are tethered to memories associated with objects, places, and people.

In “Flowers for Allen” by Amy Cipolla Barnes, our narrator takes us on a bittersweet journey about their husband. As time passes and they’ve spent forty years together, his memory has become stunted, cultural references jumbled and juxtaposed against each other. The story asks of us this: what can we do when someone else begins to forget? “[I] don’t know any better,” says our narrator.

Kayann Short’s “Front Range Triptych” weaves together three stories from and around Greely, Colorado. What seems to be trapped inside of a small Western town reveals the interconnected nature of American living. One of the three stories in this essay implies broader issues, a conversation that goes outside the borders of this town even as our speaker says, “‘We’re really in the boonies.’”

Finally, Tara Mesalik MacMahon’s poems wrench readers into the childhood memories of our speaker, offering lush visuals that truly bring us into their life. Lingering on sadness, nostalgia, and hope, these poems converse with each other and the other pieces in this issue, telling us that what remains, in the end, really is “beauty we sought.”

Spring approaches, offering new life within the season, but let us not forget what we left behind with the melting snow. There is, indeed, such beauty in woe, in what’s lost yet discovered.

Best to you all,

Rebecca & Ashley