by Garry Knight, Play Among Fountains
Dear Reader,
This past year has been filled with tension and upheaval; Our country is heading into an unknown future and, let’s be honest, it’ll get worse before it gets better. But don’t worry, we won’t discuss our political leanings here (insert sigh of relief)! Instead we want to focus on something we’ve all experienced, loss. Whether it’s loss of a beloved, of a home, or of a memory; loss is a universal feeling that artists have been exploring for centuries. In Issue 36, several of our authors explore trauma and loss.
In the poem “Funeral Song” by Patrick Haas, the speaker uses jazz music to discuss losing their father, “because he heard a soul singer singing/ and the song was for him, so alive/ it made him feel like he could die—.” In an essay “Portrait of a Childhood with Rodents,” Molly Miller talks about her childhood through the death of her pets. She talks about loss with profound lines such as, “Sometimes things want to be free so much, they don’t think about who they’re leaving behind.”
These stories and poems really hit home for Front Porch after the last few weeks of Hurricane Harvey. Our journal and staff run out of Texas, just a couple of hours north of Houston, and we have been keeping our eyes to our neighbors. With more hurricanes coming to the Caribbean and the East Coast to show their strength, we hope as many people as possible can stay safe.
This summer has brought many changes to Front Porch. Our new poetry & nonfiction editors have picked surprising and salient work from our submissions. Our Fiction Editor, Erin Salada, finished her tenure this summer with poignant pieces like “Shifted,” a flash story in which a woman’s office is broken into, and the slow impact of that violation. Salada has made an impact in many ways, but especially by finding flash pieces such as this that make our eyes see what’s in our blind field.
Our almost completely new staff are excited to see future submissions and have this opportunity to connect with the amazing subscribers and readers this journal has established in the last decade. As the journal’s new Managing Editors, we will continue to champion emerging writers and artists, curate for inclusivity and promote the art of the underrepresented and unrepresented, and be a vibrant thread in the lines of connections of the literary and artistic community.
We will keep regularly updating our social media and our Lindsey Reading Series Archives with new feature content as we look for more emerging voices for Issue 37.
We hope you enjoy this issue as much as we have. We are proud to have this out in the world.
Warmly,
Callie Wofford & Marilyse V. Figueroa