Note from the Editors
Amal says: Yea verily it is summer, for it is hot -- almost too hot for anything of substance to be written in this note. Surely it ought to be enough to say "ice yourself a drink and read some poems." No? Well.
There are shrines in this issue. There are blackberries and foxes, fey boys and stone-eyed girls, brambles, bone-riddled ivy, and feral children with knives for lullabies. There is fruit, ripe and bloody with foreknowledge of harvest; the Wild Hunt makes an appearance, as does the ever-present sea.
It is hot. Here, by my home-river, it is also humid, as if the very air would sink us, see us drowned. Bite down hard on these poems, grip them with your teeth, and they just might keep you afloat.
Some neat things to announce: Mythic Delirium 22, guest-edited by Jess and me, is now available for purchase, concluding the editorial swap we've effected with the ever-dark and always-twisty Mike Allen. You can preview some of the gorgeous poems we picked for that issue, along with some truly lovely illustrations; we certainly hope you'll check the rest out!
In other exciting poetry news, there's a brand new market for speculative poetry out there that I'm very excited about. Rose Lemberg, a frequent contributor to Goblin Fruit, will be launching the first issue of Stone Telling on September 1 of this year. She's accepting submissions until August 14, and as I have it on good authority that the inaugural issue will include an original poem by Ursula K. LeGuin, I highly recommend aiming to be in that Table of Contents!
Thanks, as ever, to Oliver Hunter for his mouth-watering art, to Dmitri Zagidulin for web-beastitude incomparable, and to our dear contributors, more precious to us than water and salt.
May your summer prove delicious.
