Volume V, No. 2–2020 | BoomerLitMag

During difficult days, and in a time of social isolation, literature remains a way to connect with other lives, views, joys and sorrows. In that spirit, we hope BoomerLitMag helps, in a small way, to provide a sense of community, comfort, and shared experience.

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Our prose offerings for this issue concern things lost, hidden, and found. “The Search,” by Kim Venkataraman, centers the narrative on the effort to find a lost child, and a protagonist who finds something along the way. “Old Man Murphy’s Boy,” by David Metz, takes us on a journey of unfulfilled dreams and fragmented relationships. Both stories speak to the human desire to live a life deeply connected to others.

How deeply and directly we participate in and experience our immediate lives is explored in many of the meditative poems in this issue. There are poems showing how memory can deepen or mess with our current experience (DS Maolalai, Sheryl Slocum), how abstraction can pull us from the “small stuff” of our fleeting experiences in Lisa Low’s “Poet in New York…” and in David R. Morgan’s odd piece, “The Film Critic,” the narrator finds he’s “living in a world of out-takes…” Rick McKenzie finds a lighter tone to this theme, looking at how our lives are being lost while being lived through our devices.

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NEW FEATURE–Call for Short Prose and Poetry

We’re experimenting with a new “Short Takes” feature for both prose and poetry. Each issue’s Short Takes writing will have a different theme. The first theme is “Stepping Back.” Feel free to interpret that phrase whatever way you like.

To qualify for this section, please address the theme with fiction or nonfiction of under 500 words or with poetry of under 50 words. Send us your very short, very polished work as a single Word attachment. Prose should be double-spaced; if sending more than one piece, please send in a single document, marking the separate pieces clearly. Send to submissions@boomerlitmag.com and please write “short takes” in the subject line.

Be well, stay safe, help each other.
Leonard Lang, Senior Editor and Adrienne Pilon, Associate Editor