issue nO.4: The Anniversary Issue!

 

Here we are, with Issue nO.4. It was a long time coming due in no small part to the deluge of submissions brought on by our new Submishmash submissions manager system (try it!) and our recent listings in various popular ‘where to submit’ type periodicals. We moved our workdays indoors, away from our favorite reading/watering hole, the Brazen Head, hunkered down to read, and argue the merits of this work and that over soups and curries instead. We took time out to write, read, reconfigure and generally adjust our grip as we inched out of our first year of the magazine. As a result, this issue is a powerful scatter shot of strong poems and, I believe, even stronger prose. The images are potent. The language hits harder than we have seen to date. I would submit that this is partly the fault of our Associate Poetry Editor, the always edgy, very punk rock, Jeanann Verlee and the incredible synergy of the editorial team.

We bring you this issue as the world reels from the US’s announcement of the death of Osama Bin Laden. It is not overstating to tell you that Union Station is one of many projects we turned to in the last several years to try to make sense of our lives in this amazing city over the last decade and to try to remember the wide swath of unvarnished truth and beauty that abounds both in and outside of it. In the coming months, we’ll present themed issues that surround looking back over the decade and the impact of 9/11, new imaginings of labor and the return to a working class ethic, and of course our next issue, as you ride into Summer will look at the music that moves and save us. I think we begin though by being astounded at how art and great writing in particular continues, expands, and re-imagines its purpose. In celebration of that notion, we present our new Works in Progress section featuring an interdisciplinary experiment by Patrick Rosal, author of Uprock, Headspin, Scramble and Dive, My American Kundiman. Here, Rosal presents the first draft of a multimedia work based on Boneshepherds’ Lament, the title poem of his newest, soon to be released collection. This striking interdisciplinary piece incorporates low-res video with a compelling and ultimately timely poem:

and maybe what Goya wants us to see from this distance

aren’t arms flung up — but wings: an angel

waiting to transport the grave bodies off the battlefield,

over the bright hill where he stands,

where no one will see them in good light.*

We hope you will take the work herein as our odd love letter to you, from a strange and dangerous land. Making this issue filled us with hope and excitement and we hope you will find that too as you slip through our ‘pages’.

Lynne Procope
Editor

*Note the excerpt above from Boneshepherds’ Lament, reprinted with permission of the author, Patrick Rosal. The poem first appears in its entirety Mascara Literary Review.