Issue Thirty: Fall 2023

The fall issue’s first speaker reflects on the imperfection and changes in the rocks he studies, and on the sense of change in himself: “I couldn’t explain. Maybe I didn’t want to / admit what was happening.” But the poem explains and admits the changes, both acknowledging and allowing them. The issue—often through images of birds and music—explores the changes that come as the seasons of life approach death and, perhaps, regeneration. From a heron “shimmering” to one silently “floundering in the ditch” to the “seagull-shaped scar” and “old footprints” that fly away, we move toward winter until there is only a memory of song: “then three keys slow. Then two. Then one. Then none.”

Issue Thirty includes work by Stephen Barile, Betty Benson, Robert Bulman, Barbara Daniels, Howie Good, David A. Goodrum, D.E. Green, Holly Guran, Alison Hicks, Susan Jaret McKinstry, Emily Kedar, Sharon Lopez Mooney, Wood Reede, VA Smith, Emily Tee, Ahrend Torrey, Thao Votang, William Welch, Nancy Yang, and James K. Zimmerman.