Issue #63

The pieces in Issue #63 each melt away themes of self, family, and change. After all, childhood is a time of innocence and growth, when genealogy meets potential; the apple begets tree begets apple. This issue features work that exemplifies and builds upon what’s been, urging us to swing from the vines of when.

The poetry of Kendra Mills suspends adulthood and nature, reminding us that imagery masters itself in a place beyond words. “If you’re reading this you are a person who was once a child,” she writes, “so you can imagine.” These pieces remind us that when infancy yearns for a fabric of freedom, childless fractals reach out like ghosts who never sleep.

In Sarah Burbank Green’s “The Empty Vessel,” the author adeptly moves through the natural world and the outside forces that disrupt it in order to show how intertwined they are in the narrator’s life. “Making urns is not a quick process. First, I must learn about the deceased, the person whose home I will be making. Then, I make the vessel, sit at the wheel, turn the clay, feel the urn into existence. Bake, glaze, and bake again,” they write in one portion of the story. Between death and living, Green’s world is delightfully alive.

Katherine May’s “Cut Here” also progresses through time and space. Beginning at age fourteen and ending nine years later, the course of a coming-of-age story is meticulously documented. “And I do know, maybe, that in some other life, some alternate past, something different could have happened. But…“ there is so much more to say, so much regret when looking back at one’s life and their regrets. Despite the “what ifs” and “buts,” we must learn to eventually let go.

This issue assures us that there’s a guidepost of honesty and illumination, and from there leads a path to waterfalls and springs. And so we are left asking: what makes our likeness bubble over in fountains, as spears puncture our bodies in morning, begging for more?

Best,
Rebecca & Ashley