Editor’s Note

we said to the war, I am an ocean.
plucked from the skein of the day, a supple life

rattle. I’ve been undone by men
with powerful hands and jaws, art critic jargon,

delicate, distant horror. I didn’t
invite you to my cheeseburger hell, slopped and

flayed, we have traversed
insubordinate catacombs, decades ago or else-

where in the world, relegated
to an editor’s note. we repay this charlatan

autumn with all hard feelings;
from this moment forward, remember the

cardinal sins thusly: please let’s
enjoy gorgons, goblins, witches, and sorcerers.

I prefer inelegance, the shovel
pass, a wounded badger limping into the snowy

woods, dragging its prey with it,
their blood mixing and decorating the earth.

for my next existence, skirmish
and chamber drama both. knowing what we

know now, we repeat in the face
of this baleful, endless war, I am an ocean and I renounce not one of my wishes.

Patrick Holian (he/him/his) is a Mexican American writer from San Francisco, California. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from St. Mary’s College of California and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. His fiction and poetry have appeared or are forthcoming in Black Warrior Review, The Cincinnati Review, december magazine, Salt Hill Journal, Bennington Review, The Acentos Review, and PRISM international, he was a 2019 Ploughshares Emerging Writer’s fiction finalist, and a finalist for Michigan Quarterly Review’s 2021 Laurence Goldstein Poetry Prize.