Editor’s Note

For weeks now, we have opened our phones to strings of notifications from news media outlets, reporting the latest plunge in stock prices, the unprecedented rise in the unemployment rate, and the newest projection of the number of individuals infected by the coronavirus. While cloistered in our houses, watching the grim news of our current reality flickering across our television screens, we have sought relief and escape through writing.

We believe literature and art have the ability to forge connections in a time when our political leaders are mandating that we physically isolate ourselves (and rightfully so). The human experience has always been one of connection, whether through writing hand-written letters to each other or FaceTiming our friends.

In the midst of a global health pandemic, we have decided to publish our third issue, hoping to serve as a platform to connect our readers and artists worldwide. This issue, we have reevaluated the way that one captures human connection through art and writing, focusing on works that concern themselves with identity, loss, memory, the illusion of space, and connection strong enough to transcend mortality.

In K-Ming Chang’s “Sleepers”, we meet a girl enmeshed in her own private struggle, conflicted between her ties to her ancestral homeland, and her awareness of her own sexual and racial identity. Kimberly Faith Waid’s “Divination” explores the human tendency to seek connections, however superficial or physical, in the midst of terrible grief.

Robin Gow’s magical realism piece, “god began sending items down to earth”, depicts a world in which our connection with the Divine is forever altered. Although the gifts God rains down on earth are individual, the people’s experiences and consequent reactions—greed, gratitude, love—are universal, mirroring the realities of our own world.

We feel it is most fitting to end with an excerpt from Sara Jeanine Smith’s “God of the Gaps”:

but if I have learned anything

it’s to remember this,

even if nothing comes of it:

the faint marks of deity

in the face of my enemy,

the remnant of piety

persisting in every curse

and the fact

that the things that are farthest

apart swallow the air

that divides them,

and then I know

you are so close

so close.

Stay healthy, stay safe, and stay connected.

Sincerely,

Hannah Han and Riley Baker

Editors-in-chief