Editor’s Note: Want
This issue is dedicated to the memory of founding poetry editor and cover artist, Esther Karen Aida (Karen Boxenhorn).
Welcome to our secret stash of dreams, our hungers and unmet needs that make up the “Want” issue. You will immediately notice the fresh energy of our awesome guest editors: W. Todd Kaneko, who’s brought previous editing experience (Waxwing) and a fantastic eye (check out his new book, The Dead Wrestler Elegies, for some fun and heartbreak); Jill Talbot, who literally wrote the book on essay forms (check out her forthcoming The Essay Form(s), Columbia University Press), and Gary Fincke, whose most recent book of flash fiction, The Corridors of Longing, couldn’t be more apt.
We say goodbye to fiction editor Mitch Ginsburg as he moves to the Israel Story podcast, where he begins work as a producer and reporter. Good luck, Mitch! But enough about the staff, delightful as we are.
In this issue you will find no dearth of longing, yearning, wanting, and having, in English originals, and in translation from the Romanian, the Danish, 13th-century Egyptian Arabic, and 16th-century France, writing from prisons and from the free world. In lieu of our usual interview, we respond to the recent Dobbs v. Jackson case with a round table on abortion, childbirth, miscarriage, and single motherhood,
We are grateful, dear reader, for your presence. More than anything else, these poems, stories, essays, translations, and works of art want you. Thank you for being here with us, for reading and bearing witness.
Marcela Sulak, Managing Editor
November 2022