August Issue: Editor's Remarks

         After three long blessed years of editing this humble little corner of the literary web I finally decided to switch Anti-Heroin Chic's format to an issue based platform, rather than rolling blog posts. This month features a very diverse group of creatives, each tackling uniquely different landscapes, some more forgiving than others. Some filled with humor, others with heartache. All of them irreplaceable and so very necessary. I've never published work that I didn't deeply believe in, which is to say I've yet to come across an expression of pain, survival and healing that hasn't in some way spoken to the parts of me that needed gentle and sometimes fierce reminders that what we do and create matters, unreligiously-it saves. I think of AHC as a space for the walking wounded, but I've yet to meet a single soul who doesn't in some way have their own fair share of shadow perched up on their shoulders. In this issue there is as much dark as light to contend with.

Marisa Crane brings us a haunting and painful grappling with the relationship between fathers and daughters, with one's past, the precious and heartbreaking things that made us. There is beautiful determination and hope in her poems as well as empathy with a parent who may or may not have done right by her. "father / who are you? / i know it’s not a / fair question for me to ask." By the end we find "heart[s] full / heart[s] broken / all at once." Crane doesn't sugar coat anything, but neither does she burn everything to the ground. She grapples admirably with the failing light of parents and the places and people that both make and unmake us.

Joshua Dean Smith, on the cusp of fatherhood, revisits in his own beautiful way the places that shaped him. Parenthood and My Teachers look into a past of Silver Maples and Scar tissue, of what we're able to save and what we're not. He writes of "kisses that felt brave / but now are language." These two poems are both deeply gorgeous and wise. They are gentle spirits and the taste of their words is so rewarding.

Kristin Garth brings us a painful, fiery sonnet of men who abuse their power. Babysitter's driven home by fathers who break the rules, passing on trauma that can never completely be alleviated. Somehow the power of the poem finds a way to make sense and light out of so much darkness and harm.

Julene Tripp Weaver brings us her fantastic Rules on Life from a Green Witch, with the powerful Disclaimer:  "most everything in your life depends on where you are born, to whom and into what class or clan." "Write one sentence per day: ordain it a poem," she advises. As a practicing psychotherapist there is the kindness of the listening and attuned ear in this poem. This poem is so very wise and necessary. It feels like that voice on the other end of the telephone at 2 a.m. when one's life is in crisis, a good, kind friend reminding us to breathe, slow down and tell them everything that happened.

Lael Lopez is a 15 year old poet with much promise. In Little Times she writes: "Where everything is terribly wrong / Or perfectly right / That we see who we really are / We see who we should trust / And who we shouldn’t / Who we loved / And who we couldn’t / That’s why I love / These little times." Such incredible verse from one so young, Lael has a gift that will surely only keep growing ever stronger with the years to come.

​Harley Claes brings us two poems of love and lust, of pain that is the great precursor to every life. Injured minds, the damage, and the solace that comes from knowing what ails us, however imperfect and often not nearly enough such solace is.

Eva Cherokee El Beze brings us on a personal journey to the far corners of the world. She describes these poems as being "inspired by the idea of Akasha. In Sanskrit this word means space; coupled with the theory of theosophy and anthroposophy that akashic records are a compendium of thoughts, events and emotions that can be encoded in a nonphysical plane of existence." Beze's two poems are a type of journal of the fragile human in-between, the above and the below. Sacred and filled with longing these poems have wings and they take flight.

Alex Harrison writes of "smoke filled people sitting around their empty ice boxes." One imagines small town despair, of the noisy barrooms where "Cheerful eyes hide broken hearts." A powerful poem that ends with one of my favorite verses; "A name like a lake, / You put out fires / Bigger than all the ideas I’ve ever had. / Be proud of that." 

​Rachel M. Patterson brings us the Jagged Pit, that deep despair we come to know throughout our lives. How do we come through intact? How do we go on despite feeling so internally dark and broken? "Suffering breeds a crack in the gate." And that's most often how light enters, as Leonard Cohen reminds us.

Judge Burdon brings us life on the skids. Hard times have taken their toll, and yet there is a longing to return home, to a place whose truth is written in on our ragged soul. "Kneels down for one more unanswered prayer. / But there's no one listening out there!" Yet there is a porch line on somewhere, Burdon insists, and we must find it come hell or high water.

Liezel Graham brings us a healing touch with her comforting poems. There is such beauty happening here even in the face of loss, despair, pain, and unbearably long, long nights. "If the child / deep within / your skin / is weeping, / sit with her / in sorrow / Rub kindness into / her wounds," Graham urges. Remind that inner child that they're okay, that they've done absolutely nothing wrong. How do we parent the internal parts of ourselves that never got the things they needed early on? By beginning. Step by step, day by day. Bravely. Unendingly.

Our featured poet Maxana Goettl brings five outstanding poems to AHC. "if i cleaned everything would you come back?" Goettl asks the one who has left. What is our fault and what is not? We can only tend to our side of the street, and loving others often blurs those lines, who brought what, who left what, what is yours, what is mine?  She writes straight into memory with a scalpel of longing "the place before tears is sticky / yellow.  in the veins behind your /  eyes, at the front of the pink / matter. the place before tears /  holds tapes. home videos and / dusty cds. coloring books. all / yellow. we swim in the place / before tears." Maxana Goettl is a poet of courage and confession, consolation and sorrow. These are deeply treasured and storied poems.

Emily Kellogg brings us four interconnected CNF pieces which explore the normalization of sexual abuse through popular culture (Gossip Girl), the denigration of women in Von Masoch, a book that once belonged to an ex. In Self Destruction she writes; "There’s a reason people self-destruct. It’s fun." Wisely pointing out that in self destructing "your audience is fickle. Sometimes it can be hard to tell the difference between the people who have come to destroy themselves beside you, and those who have come to help break you up. Either way, they’ll leave eventually. They’ll either leave because they’ve grown tired of destroying themselves, or they’ll leave because they’re tired of destroying you." These four pieces stand alone yet also tap into each other in profoundly rewarding ways. They are deeply personal and wise.

Brian Michael Barbeito brings his gorgeous verse to life in his CNF explorations of time and place. In Shallow Words (What They said before Death) he writes; "It’s sad. People grow physically but not psychologically. This I have come to know. Unless you do some inner work a process of maturation does not actually happen always." A poignant reminder that much is up to us, to the work we may or may not be willing to do. There are echoes of Proust weaving through these seven marvelous Belles Lettres. A rich and beautiful read. 

In Lions Den Ron Burch brings us a story of a young man with limited options in desperate need of work applying for a position in the crude and unforgiving environment of a sex shop, and the owner's subtle, heartbreaking warning to the kid; don't do this, get out while you can, before you become me.

Veronica Klash brings us the all too familiar dilema of our now modern daily lives, the decision to unfollow "friends" on social media. But what happens when you come across profiles of the dead? Are we reminded in those moments that our relationships with one another are not as abstract as we like to think?

Demond J Blake brings us a bit of comic relief with his story The Shrug of Life. Yet not without its harsh and unforgiving landscape. Stand up comedy, free beer and blood. "He was caught in the suburb trap. I was of the streets, I lived off of ramen, mac n' cheese, beer and wine. I slept in a concrete fountain pump, I listened to Coast to Coast Am; I knew things." Blake has a keen wit that reminds one at times of David Foster Wallace.

Our resident music reviewer Michael Mitchell offers up his take on the new self titled Searmana's album, which he describes as "Stunningly beautiful with the right amount of glitch."

I hope you enjoy this issue and our new format. I am sincerely grateful to all of you who have helped to make this journal what it is, a journey and exploration of surviving without recourse to easy answers. Of digging deep and singing loud. Blood sweat and tears. And also beauty. Despite the pain and trauma that almost kills us we find in our varied voices a way to speak into life and light. 

James Diaz,
Founding Editor
​AHC