Ghosts | 46.3

2023

These pages are the revenants and imprints of us. Ancestors, the recently passed, projections of our past selves, historic (and ever-present) evils; all of it rattles and moans in this issue.

When we first called for writers and artists to share their other-worldly words, I thought of loss—as I often do—and how the idea of apparitions around us gives us grievers comfort.

And, how these thoughts rang true. Contributors told us of the solace they felt knowing passed loved ones would echo through our pages, as in our cover artist Amy Friend’s photographs of her deceased grandmother’s nightgowns, and when “Nonna returns / from the sky” in a poem by Ashleigh A. Allen.

You’ll find many such returnees here. Ghosts in libraries, on the bus, in bedrooms, forests, and graveyards … “Accept that every house is haunted,” writes Devon Borkowski.

While we love some phantoms, others make our skin crawl. Or, the balance is more complicated, as in commissioned author Aviaq Johnston’s “Earring Repair Shop,” where the protagonist “felt a rush of terror mostly but also an underlying pang of curiosity” at a mysterious visitor whose “voice as smooth as silk slipped out of her mouth.”

After a global rush of collective terror and uncertainty, we reach the officially-declared end of a pandemic that will haunt many of us for the rest of our years. It felt fitting, therefore, to open with the poem “The Intubation Choir” by Jennifer Cox.

Further resonance comes in our illuminating interview; as Manahil Bandukwala tells Ellen Chang-Richardson, “Reaching toward a ghost always feels like an action that requires reciprocity.”

Let’s take this cue, reach in and reciprocate with all of our spirits through the ones that grace these pages. As Rezyl Grace aptly writes, “I am the ghost, and the paper is only a spectre.”

—Rachel Thompson