issue seven is a dark map showing
the locations of other
darker maps.

We are so lost
writes Penelope Shuttle in ‘Spirit Horses’.

Where god? Where time? Where soul?

On lakes, at sea, in rivers;
on fields semantic and visceral;
on tv screens and in parking lots,
these poems show us how we are
ageing privately together,
grieving alone and in union
for the world as we move
limp-footed through burning houses.

There are days wasted, not wasted,
days that end nicely and days
that are the end of all days.

As Shane McCrae writes
in ‘Blank Verse Sonnet Concluded by a Pure Rhyme and an Impure Rhyme’

a thousand years
From now they won’t believe what happened here

Kings, gods and leaders fail
in deed and language.
Dark time gets stuck
to the places we visit to escape it.

To use a line from Matthew Zapruder’s  ‘Jury Duty’,
where did I put my headlamp?

Matthew McDonald (editor)