My parents were high school sweethearts who married young and I was born soon after. I remember a girl in our neighborhood who was a year or two older than me tried to teach me to read from a well-worn copy of Little Red Riding Hood. It was fine, but my young mother brought me an even better book, The Secret of the Old Clock.

In the evening before bed we curled up on my parents’ bed to read Nancy Drew’s latest mystery.  Together we continued the series with The Hidden Staircase, The Secret of Shadow Ranch, until I eventually poured through them myself before moving next to other mysteries that often contained a supernatural element. It seems like mysteries are always taking place outside in the autumn.

Our first selection  features the smallest moon of Jupiter, “Adrastea” written by JM Huck. Gorgeous in its attention to detail and sound, read this perfect micro outside under the Harvest Moon. Nadia Bongo’s “Quietude” lauds the “electric yellow” heart-shaped  leaves of a linden tree. The final two picks, “The Autobiography of Nancy Drew” and “The Secret of the Old Clock” come from RJ Equality Ingram’s soon-to-be-published debut collection. The first poem begins, “Tell the school your Aunt Carolyn writes/The Nancy Drew books about you.” Together, these four poems offer a matter-of-factness that invites us to solve our own mysteries, find our own grace in this cooler season.

Angela M. Brommel
Editor-in-Chief and Poetry Editor
The Citron Review