EDITORS' NOTES - ISSUE #02

TONY

Here are the forces we have aligned for you; hopefully their lines will arrange themselves into a friendly and necessary face.  It might be easiest to picture Bud Cort's title character from the early Altman film Brewster McCloud in the basement of the Houston Astrodome, the 8^th wonder of the world. This issue is that character, doing pushups in the pantry, tending to its muscular (are they artificial?) wings. It will keep you safe and it will confess to you so desperately you'll think it was a kiss. We're building our third issue right now and we want your help - everyone's sending us their poems (thank you pilgrims) but we also want to see your translations, your critical reviews, your general essays, your interviews, your letters to Robert Creeley recounting your Mayan adventures, your blueprints for a new stadium with a retractable roof, your reports from the front lines of your regional scene . . .

ZACH

Here is the new room we made for you, and we've left it to hang and dangle in the deep blackness. It might be easiest to picture the cage in the British near-epic Time Bandits swinging from a large rope against the cold and infinite emptiness just outside of... (can infinite emptiness be outside of anywhere?). That cage is this room. Well-lit and warm. It will keep you safe and it will kill you - it'll rest and break your back and it will always be moving, swinging, gaining speed. This is our attempt, this continuing and evolving act of hubris, to address this deep blackness - to somewhere build four walls and fill them until they push outward. Though, of course, our particular production is in no way as British as those mischievous cross-epochal dwarves, outside of our new link to Onedit, but we did still manage to get international  (Hello Linh Dinh! Allo Jacques Roubaud! Привет Alexei Parshchikov!) because our small room is inside another with no walls and no ceiling and no floor. Ours is a room where the meetings will be held. Ours is a room where Grossman and Van Dyke can and may snuggle in the same Archie Bunker yellow recliner. Please, this is a room to take seriously. Relax on the sundry furniture, stuff the plush brassy-colored pillow cushion under your t-shirt and do your best Marlon Brando. Here, wear this lampshade - the octopus is beneath the walnut coffee table ready to tug at your pant legs; there are poets gnawing and gnawing and gnawing at the rope.