Many thanks to the contributors whose works appear in
this issue. Also many thanks to the writers who sent between states my
way. While preparing this issue, strange wonders anew-- in my Inbox each
day, odd greetings and half-cocked visions. Bruised Goth kisses and gilded
millionaire marketing poems, women speeding cross-country, potheads hot on
their chem trail. Tiny Industries pumped tiny products, Girlfriend the
Citizen saw Life of a Yeti and took the Pills to Stop Worrying About Trips
on the BART.
Every day more and more between states came: lusty
Indian gods and sugar-corroded suburb kids flurried down on my desktop.
Half-pipes, baby ghosts, Airstreams on ruined trips to Japan snowed me in.
Finally an invitation to Chocolate City with MCG cleared the path and DJ
Duck and Pignose and Gerone plowed me the skills for When I Drop this G.
After the deluge, these between states remained:
Jay Fontenot was born into a
lifetime between-state. Doctors have given Jay a "dual diagnosis"-- one of
those terms, like "metal head" or "Junior League", which carries enormous
social weight and consequence while conveying absolutely nothing. For this
issue, Jay writes about his life as prisoner-citizen, enemy neighbor,
charming villain, general dumb-butt, and actual live human being.
With her Chaos Hags, Courtney Egan takes on
gender-- gifting us with a video snapshot of one of the most elusive and
shifting between-states.
Craig Taylor’s three poems
have that lonely, funny-sad spectator feeling that sometimes come from
haunting a between-state too long or too often. With Craig, we visit
Berkeley, Coney Island, London, and a special place where beer comes in
socks.
Robert Kevin Walters shares
notes on an afternoon with his father in Mississippi. In this piece--a
father between career and retirement, two men stuck between one job and
the next, and a left-behind house.
Robin Grossinger is a
scientist and artist trying to stick a pin in a marsh. At the San
Francisco Estuary Institute, Robin processes high-tech computer mapping techniques through his lo-fi head and heart. The result
are the fuzzily precise comics Still Here-- a place where land and people
and roads collide with chicken coop histories.
Paul Maliszewski’s interview
with his mother is rife with between-states. In it, we meet a woman
between identities, a town between garbage days, and a poorly executed
statue of Martin Luther King that pits citizen against citizen.
