Issue 23

Dear Readers,

As the light fades and darkness gathers here in the northern hemisphere, we may find ourselves entering liminal spaces and uncanny places where nothing feels certain. Freud defined the uncanny as that which blurs “the distinction between imagination and reality,” belonging “to all that arouses dread and creeping horror.” Jacques Lacan added that it’s a place “where we do not know how to distinguish bad and good, pleasure from displeasure.” But when the familiar falls away and nothing is certain, it can open a new door, allowing us to explore our fears, redefine our reality, and embrace the unexpected, however unsettling.

The writers of Issue 23 have certainly reckoned with uncertainty. In these pages, you’ll meet stray animals and perplexing strangers: a masked thief, poet-activist, pulmonologist, literal Surrealist, and too many chickens. You’ll enter a bar in Norway, laundromat in Florence, hut in Bangalore, jail in the Philippines, kitchen in Moscow, and organ transplant village in Phoenix, as well as the Potomac estuary, Forest of Winds, and a suburban bedroom approaching midnight. These poets and writers have contemplated violence, history, art, water, divinity, ritual, time, death, and impermanence.

There is beauty in the darkness—what will you conjure? What will come out of hiding? Something uncanny and extraordinary awaits.

Sincerely,
Amy Dupcak