Editor’s Note

Dear Reader,

Just before the 2020 presidential election, I moved back to the small Ohio town in which I grew up to become a delivery driver. Ferrying packages over the streets I’d walked and driven growing up, I saw the same cultural war that embroiled the rest of America gripping the place and people I’d become a person in and around—a place and a people that returned to me in a kaleidoscope of incompatible truths.

I listened to my co-workers proudly proclaim how they’d refuse to get their Covid-19 vaccination, warning each other about government overreach, personal liberty, and George Soros’ microchips. I watched a man hold court outside a sport’s bar, corralling anyone who’d listen to tell them that a friend of a friend of his son’s was a doctor who knew for an observable fact that countless deaths were being misattributed to Covid-19, that they had turned the common flu into a pandemic, that the whole thing had been a hoax. Social media and the internet only amplified the chaos: QAnon’s pedophile cabals, armies of Russian Twitter bots, my Facebook feed a graveyard of posts that the fact-checkers had censored, covfefe, and endless cries of election fraud. 

I tried to convince myself that I remembered a time when we’d preface something we knew to be unsubstantiated, but as the final year of Trump’s presidency wore on even the thought of a common “we” became implausible.

I’m thrilled to introduce you to the work of Gardner Mounce, whose flash fiction explores the fractured intimacy of a family divided by hot takes. Christine Sneed confronts sexuality and self-delusion in her fiction while Noor Hindi’s poetry challenges the ways in which the media exploits trauma for clicks and views. Meet Samuel Rafael Barber’s Maureen McCurdle and her North American Tree Octopuses in an op-ed that plunges us into the mania and absurdity of internet trolls and conspiracy theories. Finally, encounter the sun bears of Sean Cho A. as they try to unravel the language of the news. Along with the stunning visual poetry of Nance Van Winckel and the looping, coiling art of Ashwini Bhasi, these artists interrogate the trauma of language, the violent churn of truth and misinformation, and the chaos of Trump’s America.  

I’d like to thank Khaled Mattawa for giving me the space and opportunity to curate this issue and Hannah Webster for all the help and support. Thank you to my co-editors Annesha Mitha, Joumana Altallal, Bryan Byrdlong, and Michael Weinstein for their kindness and guidance. Finally, I’m grateful to all of the contributors for sharing their work.

Logan Lane | Guest Editor