Sometimes words comfort and offer us peace; and sometimes words stir us and move us to wake up and act. We’ve seen a great deal of words of peace and comfort during the global challenge of COVID-19. Now the U.S. and much of the world are being stirred to change by the words and powerful actions against ongoing racism and the brutalization of people of color.

While we are not a news, opinion, or political magazine, we believe it is necessary and appropriate for us to offer a thank you to all the peaceful protestors and people who are working passionately and constructively for lasting change and solutions around the world. Black Lives Matter.

With our role as a small, volunteer literary magazine focused on the power of words and presenting accessible art, we have always strived to offer a space where readers and writers, whatever their background or country, can express and transform their pain and hopes, insights and experiences into something meaningful for themselves and all of us. We seek poetry and prose that can move us, educate us, deepen us, and connect us.

With that mission in mind as well as being aware of the current crises facing us as individuals and as a society, we’d like to announce that the theme for the next Short Takes section of short fiction, essays, and poetry is “Beyond the Status Quo.” That is intentionally broader than the challenges of racism to allow creative writers to open up new thinking in any area through art. At the same time, that topic allows us to also directly invite artistic prose and poetry submissions about overcoming the status quo regarding institutional or structural racism. Short Takes are prose pieces under 500 words on the issue’s theme, and poetry under 50 words. See details in our “Submissions” box on this page. As always, we welcome your best longer literary writing on that and all other themes too.

Finally, on the other crisis front, a thank you as well to all the frontline health care workers and other employees and volunteers who are helping us get through the pandemic. There is much to learn and change from these experiences. We know powerful art is coming already from our experience with the pandemic, and welcome that art as well.

• • •

We hope that the works presented in the current quarterly issue offer some small respite from the pandemic and make room for contemplation and hope.

We offer two gripping short stories in this issue. Both are set in the present, yet employ radically different characters, locations and situations. Ashanya Lingam’s “The Recruiter” takes us to Amsterdam where a seemingly small series of actions has profound consequences. Frank Tascone’s “There’s No One,” takes place in North Carolina, where the protagonist navigates the mundane difficulties of contemporary life.

For our Short Takes feature, prose writer Jody Strimling-Muchow and poet Andrea Johnson take up this issue’s theme of “Stepping Back.”

In our poetry, we are doing something new and exciting for the magazine, with translations, requiring us to work with very helpful volunteer readers with expertise in Italian and poetry. We’re glad we did. The result are three poems from the final poetry collection of Julio Monteiro Martins, whose poems here of passion and urban violence are awake with powerful images in a distinct, passionate voice. As few of his poems have appeared in English before, we’re especially grateful to the translators—Donald Stang and Helen Wickes–for sharing them with us. In addition, you can read our other poets with their own unique views–including a poem from Oedipus’ point of view and a poem about the life of a historical figure who resisted Nazism.

Take care and stay strong.

Leonard Lang, Senior Editor and Adrienne Pilon, Associate Editor

Contents

Prose

Ashanya Lingam
• The Recruiter

Frank Tascone
• There’s No One Back There Like That No More

Poetry

Julio Monteiro Martins –  translations by Donald Stang & Helen Wickes 
• Fabula Rasa: Imaginings from a Blank Slate
• Passion
• Enfold My Life

Celia Meade
• Oedipus

Charles Talkoff
• in the half light of october laughing

Paul Telles
• Awake

Sharon Kennedy-Nolle
• 603 Uniondale Avenue
• Alias Writ Large
• Nuevo Annunciation

Short Takes: “Stepping Back”

Jody Strimling-Muchow 

Andrea E. Johnson

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