Emerge Literary Journal: 2024

Editor’s Note

April is something of a gateway month, creating a bridge from the damp, bone-chilling cold of winter to warmer weather in May. While we may still be dodging potholes, we also see nature starting to come back to life, with grass turning from brown to green, trees sprouting buds, and perennials poking through mulch and soil. As I write this note, an army of springtime birds are singing in a cacophony of joy over the prospect of warmer weather. It is a song I can fully appreciate. There is something about springtime that brings such promise—and energy and joy. The seeds of last harvest, dormant all winter, are slowly pushing through the earth in new growth. Spring flowers have pushed their cheerful heads through the earth and up through the dry leaves to peek at the sunshine and bring smiles to the humans that tend them. But, alas, spring is fleeting. Still, the rebirth of perennials planted by those who came before us is a sign that things will return, maybe not to the life we lived before, but to something we create together moving forward just like the stars within a tiny head of a zinnia that will sprout later this summer will remind me to keep growing, keep rising to meet the sunshine and keep beauty and nature close, to keep everything in life sacred.

We find ourselves lingering in a time charged with exhausted uncertainty, stretching hope so far and thin that it registers as desperation. Now more than ever we are looking to escape to other worlds, to find the sacred in all that surrounds us—in the earth, in the relationships and connections we forge, in living, in making the best life in sometimes the worst of times. Issue 30 showcases the sacred in many forms, ranging from slices of life—the delicate deliciousness found in the ordinary, how we find faith in such pieces of living—to the abstract, which we find ourselves surrendering to daily, the worlds that ask us to abandon linear narratives, the straightforward and the usual, to enter into a spiral of color, sound, and imagination, allowing us to be enfolding in comfort. In this issue of Emerge Literary Journal, we follow the way the sacred influences the written word. Now more than ever, we understand our intimate relationship with our words, our worlds; how we interact with narrative is possibly sacred, a private practice in which we both happen to the words and all the words to happen to us. The pieces Diane and Theresa have selected for this issue capture and harness the power of this exchange.

But, what’s more, certainly, what is sacred is love at its most fundamental level, and the most important love we have will always be for ourselves. It is only from this lodestar, our own definition and practice of love, that we can turn love back out into the world and towards other people. I have experienced—and cultivated—transformational, life-affirming love in the relationships of my life, and it’s why I believe in its existence. In my heart is a list of every leap someone who loves me has made towards me; every time they have, in seeing a light, pointed me back towards it; every language that has participated in our shared and collective understanding of the world; every kind and sacred word.Love. One word, four letters—and yet somehow the weight of it far exceeds the bounds of its orthography. I often wonder how our world would look and feel if we brought love to every dimension of our lives—if we lived love as an act of collective care. The type of love that reminds us that there is no greater force on this earth than the connection between people and the willingness to open our hearts to the possibility of finding something honest and meaningful in every person we meet. Would we find it to be a powerful antidote for times as challenging and divisive as ours, softening our hearts and relaxing our minds and opening new ways for us to thrive—like tulips and daffodils in April.

It’s easy, you see. It’s easy to forget that everyone is living a story, to forget that we all hurt, that no two people’s hurt ever comes out the same. It’s easy to forget that everyone walks around with invisible weights on their hearts that are buried so deeply within their chests that our eyes and minds could never see them. This issue won’t let you forget love, and what’s more, it will open you up to what’s sacred. This issue is my gift to you, my way of showing you that what is love is not just one thing. It has forms and connections, intersecting paths and aisles, and it is as tangible as the words you can gently clip from the screen with your eyes. Enjoy, dear reader.

Warmest,

Ariana

Be Well. Write Well. Read Well.

Poetry

Tenderest || Cole Barry

ars poetica | anniversary of God the Father || M.E. Walker

Force of Nature | Unwed || Lane Falcon

The Maze Stretches Its Legs | Journey || Jen Karetnick

Softer Skin | The Basswood Cardinal || Samuel Burt

When someone asks me if you’re still nursing || Bethany Tap

Stigmatology | At first, || Shira Dentz

Haybales || Alexandra Burack

One day, i will stop writing poems about my dead father || Martins Deep

healing song || Eartha Davis

Esperanza Corner

ELJ believes that #mentalillnessawareness and #endingthestigma are of paramount importance. We believe in the necessity of sharing our mental illness and trauma stories to facilitate writing through illness and create broader awareness. We’ve created this corner to allow writers to not only share their stories but to be home to those who share in their experiences.