“Excited to be part of First Light Journal’s maiden voyage!”
Those words from Jennifer Dotson summed it up for me. This feels so much like what a maiden voyage must feel like – equal parts excitement and trepidation.
We hope for fair weather and a strong wind in our sails, but not so strong as to become a storm that sets us off course.
We hope to make it to calm breakwaters and to find a berth quayside, but we also hope that we read our charts right, and don’t run aground.
Hope, hope, hope. That is the theme that pervades our debut issue.
In this issue, there is hope shared by three generations in the smaller moments of their backyard pursuit of moby dick, in the restlessness of a fleeting heart looking for its forever home, in the myriad rooms of an apartment building in the rain, in the quiet grit of Harold Jordan, in the smile of an old neighbor now departed, in the healing thread drawn by a daughter through the needle of time from her mother’s patient instruction, in the windows thrown open to blue skies, in the security of a beautiful Hausa name, in the quest for moon glow, in the scratches of a blue formica table, in the fragrance of a newborn’s breath. Hope is packed into every nook and cranny of verse and prose.
The feature article in this issue has Jamil Wright speaking to his present state of community service tempered by a faith that has dressed his wounds left from a trying and turbulent youth.
Oliver Khan is in our Poet Spotlight with insights into what feeds his poetry and poetic process.
But you, dear reader, make this issue complete. Your reading and engagement with the issue and the journal at large is what closes the circuit. Tune in to our second contest, which will open for submissions on November 15.
With warm regards and best wishes for a productive fall and winter,
Javeed Chida & the editorial team at Starboard.
