Issue Thirty-Two: Spring 2024

Our spring issue opens with music, with the creation of structures from words: the speaker of Brodie's "Mountain Songs" wants to make sonnets out of words from Vivaldi. The sentiment is beautiful but coupled with loss: "maybe that's why / you left." The issue finds connection between song and word and world and loss: the "one last look" that concludes Boling's "Lot's Wife." There is a desire to find beauty even if, as Bennett's speaker admits, "I make it more beautiful than it is." The spring brings song but reminds us of a tilting toward loss, looking back toward lost beauty and forward, recognizing our own fragility. The issue includes work by Alexandra Risley Schroeder, Amber Cecile Brodie, Angela Townsend, Becky Boling, Bridget Ramsey, D. E. Green, David Capps, David Q. Hutcheson-Tipton, DJ Bennett, DS Maolalai, Elizabeth Birch, Joseph Hunter, Joseph Kenyon, Kathleen Calby, Lisa Ashley, Maggie Russell, Ray Corvi, Rebecca A. Spears, Stephanie Elizabeth Mohr, Steve McCown, W Goodwin, and Yalda Al-Ani.