editors’ introductions : FUTURES
From Bella:
As an anxious human living through what some might wryly call “the end of days,” I spend a lot of time trying to cure the discomfort I feel about our future. So far, I have tried: going for a walk, taking deep breaths, and singing very loudly in my car when I’m driving alone. None of these things are remedies exactly, but they all release the tension in my body long enough that I can make room for hope to exist within it. What I’m trying to say is that there are many things I’ve found to be clinically relevant in these dark times.
I would say the same about Mackenzie Stafford’s “Mental Inventory and Emotional Assessment.” This poem makes me feel the way I wish the PHQ-9 made me feel. Every time I see my doctor, I dread slogging through that emotional screening. Like, is there seriously anybody who doesn’t feel this way right now? It is an isolating experience. Mackenzie’s poem is not. It holistically gauges your emotional well-being; says, “Look! You are not alone!” In this way, it prepares you for the rest of the magazine. Which is why Charlie and I knew, as soon as we read it, that it should open this edition of Crayfish.
Some other pieces I might place in this subcategory I will now refer to as “clinically relevant” include: Carly Sachs’ “Wailing,” which is packed full of unsettling and sometimes hilarious images of life during “the end of days;” Olivia Martin’s “Citrus,” which reads like a mini confessional essay and really taps into the part of my brain that craves solution; and Brennan Baumgartner’s “Keep Your Head Up,” which makes me smile every time I see it.
In truth, we sense a deep healing potential in every one of the pieces we’re sharing with you now. This includes the impressive body of work brought in by our guest editors and artist. I was quite nervous about how well the two parts of this issue would converse with each other. For once, my anxiousness was not warranted. FUTURES reads as one, cohesive journal. I suppose this is what happens when you choose to work with such thoughtful, energetic, and generally wonderful people. Thank you to Felicia, Isaiah, and Salvador, who each put so much effort into making this themed edition possible. If somehow you can’t find hope in any of these pieces, I’m certain you’ll find it in their commitment to building a better future. Thank you, readers, for joining us on this journey.
From Charlie:
When we started to build CrayfishMag/Furnace Run Press, we promised ourselves we would experiment. This issue is the first of those. As we were wrapping up the last issue, in some sort of delirium or despair, I asked Bella, “What about a themed issue?” I wasn’t, and am not, pleased with the future emerging over the horizon, and I thought there must be a way that Crayfish can speak to this. Also, I was eager to work with some guest editors who could bring in exciting voices that weren’t necessarily on our radar.
Earlier, I’d met with the fiction writer Isaiah Hunt, who guest edits the prose in this issue, after he’d returned from Clarion West. Talking with Isaiah about his work, I found myself interested in the ways his imagination balanced play and defiance. I was also thinking of Salvador Jiménez-Flores’s art, which is featured here in a kind of ekphrastic conversation with María Santoyo, for the possibilities of identity it carves out against constraining narratives. At the AWP conference, I went to a panel on hybrid forms with the poet Felicia Zamora, our poetry guest editor, and the conversation there suggested myriad exciting ways of turning our attention toward these questions. More randomly, I also ended up connecting with the comic artist Johnny Damm at that conference. When I saw his Technocrat Tales I thought “that’s it, that’s what we need.”
Quickly, we had the bones of this issue, and now we had to wait to see what came in. The poems that Felicia curated do more than we could have hoped them to do. Having work from KB Brookins, Felicia Denaud, Chandra Frank, Kristyn Garza, Grace Gaynor, Maya Marshall, Jenny Molberg, Sara Lupita Olivares, Jessica Nirvana Ram, Chet’la Sebree, and Annie Wenstrup is a real honor. The prose pieces Isaiah collected are each so different from one another. Alexandra Salata’s piece sets up Lora Gray’s, which, in turn, prepares us for Charles Velasquez-Witosky and Miles Purdy. The guest editors really did it and we are grateful.
Delightfully, the submissions that came through our open process hold their own next to this work. Being able to host Clayton Tarantino’s first publication alongside established writers like Sean Prentiss, Carly Sachs, and Sara Moore Wagner excites us. You’ll find returning submitters like Mercy Turle, Regan Schell, and Olivia Wachtel who continue to impress us. We are also very fond of Phoenix Davis-Bailey’s illustrations and the through-line they give the issue. Truthfully, there’s nothing in this volume that we aren’t thrilled with.
The result is a double-length issue exploring our collective dissatisfaction with the future being offered us. One of the things that surprised me most about this process was how some of the pieces take on the big-picture collective problems of where we are headed, which I expected, yet others are much more personal, which I didn’t expect. They might just mark a change, whether a loss or a rite of passage, in a very intimate way. I’ve gone on too long. I hope you enjoy these pieces as much as we do.
