EDITOR’S LETTER

It’s a new year, MockingHeart friends! Here we are in 2023, an odd-numbered year for a moment that feels similarly out of joint in some ways–the pandemic is abating, so they say, and yet many of this year’s concerns are the same as those of the previous. Unlike in certain calendar-turnings where the world at large feels as though it’s undertaken a new and radical direction, many folks I’ve spoken with have confided that this year feels like a continuation with which they weren’t prepared to grapple. It’s safe to say that going forward, we all might need to have a little resourcefulness.

In this Winter 2023 issue of MHR, creators consider countless ways to be resourceful–that indispensable ability to overcome difficulties efficiently and cleverly. Striking here is how subject matter ranges from the personal to the global to the nature-focused. Leslie Schultz uses a match dropped in childhood to convey an urgent ecological message–“who,” she laments, “will save us now?” Featured Poet Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg finds inspiration and a balance with nature in “Saving the Farm,” where the narrator and her husband “pledge ourselves to this story / of a single blue heron swimming the sky / that reads the land’s moisture and drought.” In “Grandma,” Rosalie Hendon presents a paean to “the center of our family, / the breeze in the pines,” a woman who is hardier than most might be. And John Muro contemplates the ways nature makes determined room for itself in “A Winter Offering,” where “light [whittles] away at / the nearer edge of heaven.”

I hope you enjoy the work in this issue, friends. Thanks for reading, for submitting, and for being a part of the MockingHeart community. Things wouldn’t be the same without you. And thanks again, as ever, for your excellent work in the world.

Tyler Robert Sheldon, Editor-in-Chief