issue 13

A message from the editor

It’s a well-known secret that there are skyscrapers in this country’s great cities that superstitiously refuse to name a 13th floor.  You almost don’t notice the missing number on the elevator’s panel as you scan for your destination.  But look sometime, as 12 suddenly turns to 14.  This is a silly (though very human) kind of comfort, as though simply omitting the symbols, refusing to speak the words, can ward off the misfortune we all fear. 

As Black Fork Review brings out our 13th issue, we’ve been thinking about those dishonest elevator panels – about anxieties and superstitions and curses and luck.  And most of all, about the things we’re willing to speak and those we leave unsaid. 

If art can do anything, it can confront us with ourselves – show us that which we look at all the time without realizing we haven’t even seen (or perhaps that we didn't want to see).  How appropriate, then, that Issue 13 is a Fisher Queen’s lament, an ASMR streamer losing himself in the darkness, and a missing collection of lost souls.  That Issue 13 has no interest hanging out with saints; it wants to whisper something blushing and giddy and shameless in your ear.  That Issue 13 doesn’t want to jinx us all; it is listening for predators, even now; that it’s thinking of moonlight and filling with salt.  These are deceptively dangerous pieces, and we’re excited to present them to you, eager and unflinching.  We hope you’ll find something thrilling and unexpected in them as well. Thanks for reading.

-- Chuck Carlise, Editor