Issue #64

Another sliding the dial of year in New England: maple leaves turning brown and yellow, scattering the roads. There’s a continuation of the cycles of life, death, and rebirth all around. Our Issue #64 opens the window to let in cool winds of many faces, with clouds rolling by with yesterday on the way to tomorrow. We’re eloquently reminded this issue that we are but part of a global structure of minds in an ecosystem of fish, birds, and hives, as well as Men.

Readers will follow a poetry series that invites and provokes throughout our featured portfolio by Ana Reisens. These pieces initiate deep portraits—each poem named for a different woman—and offer strange and wondrous imaginings, such as in Aiyana: “It’s not easy to translate / the wild dialects of branches – / but the willow is persistent / in its whisper, and Aiyana / is listening.” We were, too, captivated by this imagery in Naomi: “You must step off trains / in lands with no names / where little girls hold open / their hands asking for lullabies.”

In Heidi Croot’s creative nonfiction piece “It’s Time to Close the Book on my Mother,” she writes, “Through the years, we’d lived no more than half an afternoon’s drive apart. We widened that distance by putting most of our words in writing.” Grappling with the grief and impacts that come with losing one’s mother, this writing is a reminder of who—and what—we leave behind with the passing of time. Eloquently moving through past and present, this moving portrait of life and death is a necessary one.

On the other hand, it is Bill Smoot’s “Four Paintings,” the fiction selection for this issue, that preserves emotion and life through the lens of a different medium: painting. A character’s daughter’s painting, done by a twelve-year-old, evokes a certain kind of sadness for the character, linking together how art imitates life and replicates our most inner thoughts. Later on, the character admits about her daughter’s paintings, “‘Her paintings make me feel like I don’t know her.’”

Fall rain, chilled steps, child, mother, time’s movements we must follow and accept. Growth and development is never easy but here is where art digs deep. And so it is this we are left asking: what awaits you in the new season?

Best to you all,
Rebecca & Ashley