editors' note

This August, we were both traveling, separately, around the north of Ireland, and we planned to meet up for a day. The meeting place: the corner of a country road in County Donegal. No address or street sign. Cell service spotty. The one-lane two-way road more dirt than tar, grass along the middle. Ireland’s not a big country, but there are plenty of country roads. Jeff was visiting friends, who live in an old stone house bordered by pasture. Adam was driving from Sligo with his family. The plan seemed pretty concrete when we’d made it a week earlier in Manhattan, less concrete as one of us drove and one of us waited. The closer we got to our 11am meeting time, the less likely it seemed we’d find each other. And then, we did.

           

We spent the day walking, and, as always, we talked J, this time against the backdrop of mussel beds and a sprawling beach and sloping mountains with herds of sheep. When the day ended at a local fish-and-chips joint, it felt like our time had gone according to some bigger plan—the connection made in the middle of open land, the cool weather perfect for walking, the scenery a break from NYC’s bustle. We’re always looking for links, parallels, threads, and our day hanging out in County Donegal reminded us, in retrospect, of how our journal sometimes comes together, with synchronous luck. We read submissions. We send acceptances. We hold what we want for an issue until the folder is filled. Closer to pub date, we put the pieces together, then read the issue beginning to end. Often, with fresh eyes, we reorder the pieces into a sequence that creates a more meaningful whole.

 

The unplanned plan that guides this issue is stress. As we tell our fiction students, putting characters in uncomfortable places reveals truths—and the discomfort in these stories and poems feels acute. From the reading of a will to manic visions of a man/monster, from racial profiling to the dread of AI, from a school shooter’s lingering effect to a pitch contest in Yankee Stadium where so much rests on a single toss, truths get revealed. Of course, discomfort is part of the human condition. It’s the struggle, even if mundane, that defines us and our characters. As the last line of Maryann Corbett’s poem puts it, we keep returning to “The holy ache of dailiness.”

 

In Ireland, we didn’t feel much of that ache—it was a new day in a new country and we’d never talked J in Ireland. But, as we know from reading so much Irish lit, the ache resides there and everywhere.

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Jeffrey Heiman, Adam Berlin

New York City

December 2024