EDITOR’S LETTER

MockingHeart friends! How’ve you been lately? It’s been too long…and since we’ve last talked, a lot’s been happening. Summer is nigh, and here in Louisiana, the hints of heat are out on the street, wavering the air as does a charcoal grill in the evening, when that heat finally begins to abate and one can sit outside enjoying the perpetual musical drone of cicadas, frogs, and that one truck that won’t stop rumbling up and down the street. You know the one. We’ve seen it too.

This issue is full of musicality, all of it sweet to the ear in ways we need to hear. Our Featured Poet, Dave Malone, delves into a very particular past with “Gilligan’s Island Reruns for Latchkey Kids,” recalling, “On screen, we explored // the well-lit jungle, the sand / on the lagoon’s beach / where the hands // of civilization would / sometimes reach.” In “Sympathy,” Ruth Bavetta lays out an undeniable rationale for humanism. She lists it compellingly: “Because wings, / because sky, because // a pier’s outstretched finger / pointing west.” And we get it. We can’t help it. In “The Cat Teaches Me About Mortality,” Isiaih Vianese admires the bravery of those smaller–but also so much bigger–than we are: “Do you know what he does? / He lays down next to me, / rests his head on my hand. / He purrs and curls in close.” The little life in this poem is more than enough to bring a tear, carried along by internal rhyme. And artist Suzanne Wiltz, though her compelling collages, shows the quiet musicality of nature.

Please visit all of this issue’s excellent works, as we make our multivalent way through MockingHeart Review‘s tenth year! Keep on creating, dear MockingHeart friends. This writerly/artistic business is honest, necessary work, but it’s necessary play too, and we should all try to bear that in mind. In this ever-serious world, we could all use a little levity. Thank you, as always, for your excellent work in the world.

Tyler Robert Sheldon, Editor-in-Chief