Welcome to our Spring 2020 issue! Where you can expect to find our signature cornucopia of visual arts, short-form writing, and diverse voices: a total of 97 works by 59 authors and artists (details at our Statistics page).

And MacQ-2 delivers a profusion of prose poems—we gathered a coupla dozen by 18 poets—in part to commemorate distinguished editor and professor emeritus Peter Johnson and his latest anthology, A Cast-Iron Aeroplane That Can Actually Fly: Commentaries From 80 American Poets on Their Prose Poetry.

To whom I offer an enthusiastic tip of the hat with my review of his fine book.

Speaking of reviews, this one by eminent poet and professor emeritus Eamon Grennan is a must-read: An Object of Wonder—a title which I believe applies as much to this concise and eloquent review as it does to the book it lauds, Always Say Goodnight: Elegies for Lenora by Matt Bialer. Two thumbs up for both.

Featured Artist, a Prose Poet

Lorette C. Luzajic, mixed-media visual artist, poet, and founding editor of The Ekphrastic Review, recently released a collection of 100 of her ekphrastic prose poems, Pretty Time Machine. We’re pleased to present two selections from her book, along with four of her collage artworks and Jordan Trethewey’s interview, which includes seven questions about Luzajic’s creative process.

See Featured Artist.

Highlights: Fiction and Hybrids

For our fiction fans, we have 13 micro and flash stories on tap, as well as five haibun stories, the latter of which combine elements of fiction + prose poetry + one or more micro-poems. Sounds amazing, yes? I think so, of course, but see for yourself. ☺

Here are a few fiction and hybrid samples from our menu:

⚡ Red Dawn by Denis Bell [micro-fiction, ekphrastic, with collage illustration by Louise Freshman Brown]

⚡ Art Education by Joseph Mills [micro-fiction]

⚡ Noir [A Triptych] by Stella Pierides [haibun story]

⚡ The Sound, the Message by C.C. Russell [micro-fiction]

⚡ Wolf by Francine Witte [micro-fiction]

“New” Contributing Editors

A warm welcome to the MacQ Masthead, to Claire Everett and Bill Mesce, Jr., both of whom have been contributing unofficially as editors to our mission for a few years, first at KYSO Flash and now at MacQ. I’m honored that they’ve granted me permission to acknowledge them publicly this way.

I.

Much gratitude to Bill Mesce, Jr. for introducing us to writings by several of his students. We were delighted to be among the first to publish flash fictions by emerging writers Carrie Close (Leprechaun) and Olivia Dalessandro (On the Beach With Linda).

In this issue of MacQ, we’re pleased to present Harass the Florist, micro-fiction by Taylor Rossics, also one of Professor Mesce’s writing students.

A former corporate writer at HBO (27 years), Mesce is the award-winning author of two dozen screenplays and numerous novels. He holds an MFA in Fiction Writing from Fairleigh Dickinson University and now teaches Creative Writing at the University of Maine, Farmington. For more details, see his bio on our Masthead page.

(Appearing in KYSO Flash: two of Mesce’s shortest fictions, Tides and The General, and a craft essay, Tell, Don’t Show.)

II.

Since first learning about Claire Everett’s work four years ago, we’ve happily published a dozen or more of her marvelous tanka prose (factional) and tanka tales (fictional)—for the complete list, please see the KYSO Flash Index of Contributors—as well as works by other poets she has recommended to us.

She served as tanka-prose editor for Haibun Today (2011–2016), and as founding editor of Skylark: the journal, which she published from its inauguration in April 2013 thru its final issue, Summer 2019. She has also served on the editorial teams of three anthologies. For more details, see her bio on our Masthead page.

I look forward to Claire’s guidance in our outreach to encourage more writers to send us tanka forms.

Editor’s Choice Award

The Editor’s Choice Award for MacQ-2 was selected from a short list of ten finalists, which in turn were chosen from nearly a hundred works that appear in this issue. My happy thanks (and a small cash prize of $100 USD) to Kimmo Rosenthal for publishing this unusual creative-nonfiction piece with MacQ:

⚡ Olympia (Thoughts on a Courtesan in Eight Chapters) [ekphrastic CNF, after Manet’s painting] by Kimmo Rosenthal

And here are the other fine finalists, listed in alpha order by author’s last name:

⚡ To My Husband Unexpectedly Called Away [micro-CNF] by Roberta Beary

⚡ The Last Man on the Moon [prose poem] by Bill Capossere

⚡ The God Particle [prose poem] by Robert L. Dean, Jr.

⚡ Two days before our neighbor died [poem, lineated] by Scott Ferry

⚡ On St. James’ Feast Day, the Shells of Abakanowicz [prose poem, ekphrastic] by Linda Nemec Foster

⚡ Green Gloves (On Becoming a Roadside Frog) [haibun story] by Jonathan Humphrey

⚡ A Dog Is a Dog Is a Dog [flash fiction] by Arya F. Jenkins

⚡ In a Brown Study [haibun story] by Bob Lucky

⚡ Discriminating Distinction [prose poem] by Jeanne Yeasting

Thank You

As always, my heartfelt gratitude to all of our lovely contributors and readers! ♥ ♥ ♥

Time is more precious than ever, so I especially appreciate your visits here. And I hope you find much to enjoy at our smorgasbord...