February 2026
Read January 2026 HERE!
February 2026
Editorial: Risky, Radical Desire
This issue is intended to bring some humor and tenderness to the middle of winter. I think we might need it. I know I do personally. It was a struggle to write last month, let alone write this intro. My soul felt like a nail-encrusted baseball bat that kept beating back the spirit-crushers of the world.
It was a month of ice here in my corner of the world. Ice commandeered the news because of winter storms, because of ICE agents storming Minnesota. Ice, ICE, ice—a lot of talk of ice and ICE. And Greenland, which the U.S. President called Iceland, but that was already a few weeks ago.
I have taken to listening to classical music—the boisterous and baroque. Especially Vivaldi. I feel compelled to mention that Vivaldi was an asthmatic priest that composed for an orchestra of orphan girls. In the 1700s, in Venice, they could learn an instrument, and eventually go on tour. I try to imagine the love Vivaldi had for his music, for the children of the orphanage perhaps. I try to imagine love.
This issue is about love, I remind myself. Because my love has become barbed, as prickly as a hedgehog.
Friday before the big ice storm, the shelves were empty—no bananas, low on milk, eggs, bread, that whole thing. I stock up on cheese and butter, the latter in case I get the urge to bake. Saturday before the big storm, ICE killed another. The day of the storm, I baked cookies and imagined eating all of them. I wanted to stuff my mouth to stop screaming.
This issue is about desire, but my desires have become risky. I desire sugar and justice.
I’m not alone in saying I’m not ok. I’m tired, my brain churns. This issue is about need, and I need a break but can’t look away. For weeks, I constantly summoned the anger from deeper and deeper within my core. But even my anger is running dry, and below the rage…? Please not apathy.
The plows have come and gone, but patches of ice are still everywhere, waiting to trip you, skid you, flip you. We’re all still scraping away layers of rock-solid hatred. Hoping, hoping, that below it is fierce, radical love.
* * *
We start this month with that promised tone shift. If you are in need of a cheery space adventure, look no further than Christopher Degni’s “Me an’ Streeter (an’ Vince) Chase a Comet.”
“Everyone Hates It When The Alien Shows Up At The Club” by Elijah J. Mears also gives us a darkly comedic Greek chorus narrating an alien sighting.
We have desire at its most dangerous in “A Thimbleful of Need” by Christine Hanolsy.
And, desire as cleansing exorcism in “A Lesson On Learning Your Place In the Universe” by Thomas Price.
Our lone reprint in this issue is Samantha Murray’s “This Blue World.” Her piece provides a softly romantic moment as the narrator makes peace with committing to a relationship.
We end with “In Brightness and in Darkness, We Sit” by Christopher Blake. This tender story uplifts the work of feeding, loving, and caring for our neighbors even when we don’t see them often, don’t know them well, and aren’t even sure they can do the same for us.
Revisiting these stories has been a reminder that there is a laugh in the darkest comedies, orgasm in the most risky desires, and love even for the neighbors that are invisible and mysterious.
* * *
Ⓒ Rebecca Halsey
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Swampland
Any town built on swampland is bound to sink.It will collapse into the layers of substrate and sediment from the pressures of time and space, and people stomping through their routines. Prefabricated houses, all askew, are weighed down with chipboard furniture assembled using finicky allen keys through blurry tears. You hope a new shelf might […]
Death Is a Black Door in the Ghetto
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