EDITOR’S LETTER

MockingHeart friends! Welcome back. Despite it being autumn, the warm temperatures cling persistently to Louisiana’s days and early evenings. Morning and pre-night are tinged with warmer light now, and it seems that the two seasons are doing an intricate interplay between the erstwhile summer’s heat and the bonfire-clad chill we’ve all been waiting for.

Similarly, the theme for this year’s fall issue is cooperation – and it takes various forms in the work throughout. Our featured poet, Robert McDonald, discusses the cooperation of past and present, animal and human, in his included pieces. The artist Vantage also discusses cooperation in their street photography, showing how many minds can chronicle a history greater than an individual might be capable of expressing. Poet Patricia Nelson, in her poem “Egyptian Priest Defines the Romans,” shows how we sustain cooperation between the minds that come before and after us, writing, “The gods they’ve made are like them.” And artist Normal Gergaly, in their piece Flórák (4), ruminates on cooperative connections between humans and nature.

It’s also a moment of great sadness in the poetry community at large, as esteemed poet and educator Harley Elliott passed away unexpectedly in August of this year. Appreciated by all who knew him–including this writer–for his wry wit, his keen observations of the world in his writings, and his own sense of cooperation throughout his life, Harley take on our theme has an unorthodox twist, as you’ll see in his poem “Instant Karma.”

We so appreciate your literary citizenship, MockingHeart friends! Thanks for being you, and for helping others along the path of being themselves too. And thank you, as ever, for your excellent work in the world.

Tyler Robert Sheldon, Editor-in-Chief