✧☾✧​​​​​

​

Have you ever noticed how in the midst of dark moments, some people can make a joke or call up a memory that fits fluidly into the situation and makes everyone feel a little better? The mind can demand a release from extreme tension. It might rule that humor needs to emerge as an extension of empathy. It might call something funny to explore a social boundary. One of my favorite poems in this issue, by Justin Howerton, says, "guys, it’s funny, come on. / The boys were too nice / to punish me like I wanted."

Grief or shock can also manifest in a seemingly unbefitting way, looking different from the norm of how a particular feeling is usually expressed. Like laughing at something tragic. "During these dimorphous displays, both positive and negative expressions occur simultaneously in a disorganized manner, which leaves witnesses to rely on the context of the situation to interpret them."

How does this relate to poetry? I think comedy is just as involved with pinning down the odd, uncommon, and idiosyncratic as poetry is. Though it may not present in every poem, I noticed humor, irony, and surprise as the spark backlighting many great lines. Some of the poems are so raw in their subject matter that their humor ends up making just as much sense as their paradoxical cleanness and sure, unwavering tone.

Even when the stakes of global and U.S. politics couldn't be higher, the public image is as vivid as ever, as it was in Song of the Open Road or A Supermarket in California, "in this clean-as-a-lab space / where they might cut diamonds on the side, / chrome knives shining, / the alter killing floor wild with color" (Mark Dunbar).

I also think that successfully weaving a biting humor into poetry is one of the hardest tightropes to walk. Check out the poetry and nonfiction below, and see what you discover, including beautiful and complex lyricism in the poems of Zeke Shomler, Harrison Hamm, Paul Nelson, and more.

Maybe you also sense the theme of the absurdities beneath our societal umbrella. "It’s real blood but canned laughter. / .... It’s medicine that cures / you but only after it makes you / really sick first" (Patrick Meeds). ​

​

As always, I am thrilled that we have received submissions from all across the U.S., and so glad to feature a talented Ukrainian artist in this issue. Thank you for reading.

​​​​​​​

​

​M

​​

​​

​