Introduction to Issue 38

Welcome to the Real World

Recently, I rewatched the Matrix. Recent current events, that is the last nine years or so, seem to indicate all the water sources of the world have been dosed with red pills. (The ex-president’s trial doubly reinforces that feeling.) The movie felt to me like an interesting blend of cheesy special effects, overacting, bizarre, derivative action scenes, and prophecy.  I haven’t seen the sequels yet so I’ll reserve judgment on that matter. Mostly what going down the rabbit hole feels like now is nostalgia for No Drama Obama or what might have happened if we had all been given the blue pill instead of the red one.

How we live now is a time when all reason and logic have been replaced by irrational and emotive responses to absurd, hot button, cultural issues instead of to substantive ones.  We have one political candidate who admits to having had a  worm eating his brain causing permanent cognitive issue such as short and long-term memory deficiencies! (Not to mention his off-the-charts mercury levels in his body attributed to a diet that seems to be primarily tuna fish sandwiches.) The Afib, a decade plus addiction to heroin leading to the open questions about his overall physical and mental conditions. But he looks great with his shirt off doing pushups and I guess that matter more than anything else. Good optics rule!

I’d love to see Trump do a pushup but he’s in jail, I mean, in court,  trying to stay awake, releasing poisonous gases, as he nods off and trying to rally his cult following to protest the criminal trial in New York.  Interviews he has released show that he is a vengeful, wannabee autocrat, who is woefully unqualified to be president of anything and mentally ill to boot. So why not vote for him? That’s what the red pill is for; once inside the rabbit hole only the irrational makes sense. Personally, there are no worse optics than court artist renderings of T. asleep at the defense table but what do I know?

The third candidate no one wants, is too frail and old. Seriously frail and seriously old looking, though he does seem to have a firm grasp on most issues and has actually got some constructive stuff done. Which is more than you can say for most of the rest of the government which has overdosed on red pills and only seems to want to foment chaos and get face time on TV. Are you listening MTG and cohorts?  Chaos. That’s just the way the orange jesus/turd thrive son and wants.

Maybe The End Is Near should replace maga as the slogan for the election. Especially if 45 becomes 47, with unlimited power, without legal recourse to inhibit him, enabling him to act out his six-year-old, badly in need of a timeout, tantrums.  We’ll need more than red pills to save us then. In the meantime, we can savor his court appearances, like jail to him, and wonder why the hell was this not televised? Seriously, why not, really ? The second-hand optics were so bad no one could come back from a day-by-day dose of blue pill reality.  If only.

Assembling this issue was slowed down by personal illness. It’s tough to focus when you can’t stop coughing long enough to complete a single sentence. This is particularly large issue due to a call for submission on Facebook and an inordinate number of review books. I still have close to a dozen books on my pile that need to be read, processed, and reviewed including ones by Jackie Craven, Barabra Ungar, Eleanor Kedney, Drew Pisarra, Ryan Quinn Flannagan among others.  I am pleased to be publishing poems by old friends Kelley Jean White, David Giannini, Kyle Law, Mark Young, Robert Cooperman, Kevin Ridgeway, D.E. Steward, Susana Case and David Chorlton among many others. Juliet Cook returns with some of her amazing collaborators. Small press standouts Ron Koertge and Charles Harper Webb make their first appearances here as do local poets such as James Duncan and R.M. Engelhard while Charlie Rossiter, Sally Rhodes, and Cheryl A. Rice return. #38 has the usual diverse, eclectic voices that make editing a journal a rewarding endeavor.  None of this would be possible without Jennifer Lagier’s tireless devotion to the nuts and bolts of coding the material and maintaining the presentation. And the presentation would be artless without the work of our resident guru with a paint brush, Gene McCormick. My hearty thanks to them both.

On a sad note, several of our poets have passed away recently.  Paul Sohar one of the most dedicated translators anywhere, and a fine poet himself, passed away late last year. Neo-Beat Andy Claussen died recently.  He was a major voice in the scene and a dynamic open mike reader. My friend Tom Thomas, aka The Poet Spiel, finally succumbed to a years long battle with cancer and Alzheimer’s. I promised him a tribute when he passed on and you can see it here featuring a couple of my inspired-by-his-work poems and a selection of his poems. Last, but by no means least, local poet, teacher, friend, environmental activist Stu Bartow died in January. A tribute reading recently showed just how much he was loved as a man and as poet and he will be missed by all who knew and loved him.