September 22, 2021

Hello, Friends, 

As editors, reading submissions often feels like taking the pulse of the creative community. We see, reflected in the work we receive, a pastiche, a crazy quilt response to the world that surrounds us. Over the past six months, the divining rod of our inbox has revealed our collective consciousness to contain an increased yearning for connection, a rise in despair of isolation, a sense of impotence, along with a dark, defensive humor. We’ve read loss, grief, sarcasm, and irony, a broad spectrum of human-centric fixations.  

Assembling this new issue of MoonPark Review, we observed a noticeable shift, a broadening of the collective anxiety, to our natural world of rivers, seas, and other creatures who share this planet with us, past and present, ubiquitous, endangered, or extinct. Our editorial approach is not to define themes in advance, or to approach our reading with any particular bent, save our own eccentrically-blended aesthetic. We like our quarterly issues to sprout organically, to cover diverse ground while rooting into something essentially now. 

In this, our 17th issue of MoonPark Review, you’ll find trees weeping in forests, frightened woodland creatures, a despairing God of war, dinosaurs tumbling under ocean waves, a love letter to the collective consciousness itself, a swamp creature who can’t sleep, a murderous delicacy of venomous jellyfish, and the surprising beauty of a post-apocalyptic river. 

From the final prose poem of the issue, “In Conclusion,” Mercedes Lawry writes: The world was unfolding and we were privileged to watch. There was still wonder.

Indeed, we are filled with wonder at the amazing work we continue to receive in our inbox. These are difficult times, and we may all occasionally feel that rising sense of despair and isolation. Yet we are also, as a creative community, producing glorious art that acts as a prism, reflecting the full spectrum of our world’s beauty, color, and light. 

This is Issue 17, MoonPark Review.

Happy Fall, 2021.

Mary Lynn & Lesley Weston-Reed

 

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