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Archives for October 2020

October 1, 2020 By Suzanne Farrell Smith

Editor’s Note Issue #2

October 2020

Editor’s Note

suzanne farrell smith headshot

Just after midnight on March 3rd, an EF-3 tornado churned through an East Nashville neighborhood, killing five. The tornado missed the home of close friends, with two young children, by two blocks. A few months later, in my Connecticut home, I strapped bike helmets on my boys as we sheltered under a blanket during an Isaias-spawned tornado warning—my first ever. 

As I write, deadly wildfires burn the Pacific Northwest, where two of our October authors live. Tropical storms and hurricanes (so many that we’re into the Greek alphabet) soak the Southeast, where our third author resides. 

Why, in times of fire and flood, do we spend an hour hunting for a word, a day inside an idea, a weekend cutting and pasting… only to return to the original. Why make art now? 

Recently, I came across the Nashville tornado again, in the beautiful “Specific Air” by Rebecca Titus. Titus writes that after the tornado, a friend, whose property was heavily damaged, sent her a text: Let’s document with art. Whenever there is daylight come. There are side streets.

I read those lines over and over. Three lines in a text by an unnamed friend of an author I don’t know who lives close to people I know well. I noted the lack of comma between “daylight” and “come” and read it like a prayer.

Our authors this month write of torrents and wild flora, fire and a hungry sea. Makers of our companion pieces show storms and middle-of-the-night fear, a flight along cello strings and a flower as seen by my six-year-old son.

Let’s continue to document. When our places are burning and flooding, let’s take the side streets if we have to, and make the art we need.

Suzanne Farrell Smith

Filed Under: From the Editors

October 1, 2020 By Cheryl Wilder

Who made it? Issue #2

Who made it?

October 2020 | Issue #2

With “Pioggia” by JC Reilly

Abstract cover art of a cello with yellows, maroon, blues, and purples
“Cello Flight” composed and performed by Melissa Westgate.
Photo of alley in Venice by author JC Reilly. 

With “Jumpers” by Seth Jani

“The Late John Garfield Blues” by John Prine.

With “ballad of tribades / song of sodomites” by Hazelle Lerum

Child diagram showing the parts of a flower.
Preschool science project by Rafferty Smith.
“Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll” by Ian Dury.

Acknowledgments

Abstract city lights background photo by Natasa Adzic from Bigstock.

Detail of stained glass window background photo by Nancy Bauer from Bigstock.

Filed Under: Who made it?

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