My family just moved to Nashville. Moving is a hard time, but one that is exciting because you replace a lived-in sky with a new sky—and with that sky—new places to see and experience. This week was Spring Break for many Nashville public schools. For my daughter and me, that meant visiting places we had never been to before, like the Cornelia Fort Airpark. The Airpark, which closed in 2011 after a historic flood, offers abandoned runaways, a playground, hawks flying overhead, and access to Nashville’s greenways. Super cool, and a good place for a kid to learn how to ride a bike. New skies promote excitement. If you get a chance, look up Cornelia Fort, who was the first female pilot to die on duty. She was also part of a specialized group of female aviators known as the Women’s Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron (WAFS) that delivered new planes to military bases. A legend in her time.

We’re all striving to be legends in some way. We want to be exceptional, to write or do something few have done. We want recognition? Maybe or maybe not. Maybe we just want to do a good job. The poems of the spring issue do a good job and more. Like when I read them I knew they were keepers and the editors felt the same. That’s our opinion. But more than performance, these poets and poems are imbued with life and craft and the intangibles that spur a second read.

Here are the poems:

Vogue Robinson’s “Juneteenth 2021”
Lucia Cherciu’s  “Immigrant Verbs”
Benjamin Truax’s “Quadratic End”
Brandel France de Bravo’s “Mind Training Slogan 34: Don’t Transfer the Ox’s Load to the Cow”

Still searching for my preferred complimentary close,

Eric Steineger
Senior Poetry Editor
Editor of Zest
The Citron Review