Issue 10: Palimpsest

Cover art: “Family Trees” by Kale Hensley

Editor’s Letter

As I read and reread the pieces in this issue, I kept coming back to a single word: palimpsest. I’ve always loved it for its quiet poetry—how it names something simple but true. A palimpsest is a surface written over many times, with the earlier marks still faintly there. I think of a classroom whiteboard: you erase the words, write something new, and yet the old lines linger underneath—part of the surface that is changing and growing to hold more words.

Reaching a tenth issue feels a little like that too—not in a nostalgic way, but in the sense of living with what has been written before. This issue isn’t about looking back so much as noticing the way our lives layer themselves. How memory presses through the present. How we keep changing and still carry what came before.

Issue 10 leans toward shorter forms. I love how, in their brevity, these works invite the reader to participate: to fill in the edges, to echo the emotion, to see their own life in the negative space.

In our opening section, I. Ancestry Field Guide, the work looks directly at lineage and the traces family leaves behind. These poems and artworks feel like maps with well-worn edges, returning us to the places that formed us.

II. Thresholds moves into the in-between spaces—dreams, hauntings, moments that feel like standing in a doorway you’ve stepped through before. These pieces hold the blur of memory and the tug of return.

In III. Communion, the tone shifts inward. These writers explore belief, ritual, and the quiet acts that give shape to meaning—small devotions that echo long after they’re done.

IV. Refractions brings us into the fault lines: the distortions, the uncomfortable mirrors, the selves we recognize only in pieces. The work here examines what happens when the layers misalign or refuse to stay neat—how the marks of strain accumulate, and how new versions of the self emerge from what doesn’t quite fit.

Finally, V. Kintsugi turns toward repair. These pieces don’t pretend everything can be restored, but they show how joining broken parts with kindness and fresh perspective can reveal something new—something strengthened by its seams.

Thank you for reading, and for being here as this magazine marks a new chapter.

Welcome to Issue 10: Palimpsest.

Hannah Cole Orsag
Editor-in-Chief

Discover the stories behind the stories!

Find the Artist’s and Author’s Notes at the end of each piece, where
contributors share the memories, influences, and hidden layers that
informedtheir work—small glimpses into the palimpsest beneath the page.

I. Ancestry Field Guide

Family Trees by Kale Hensley // Visual Art (Cover)
Ancestry.com Subscription by Kale Hensley // Visual Art
Dugout Replica by Ryan Clark // Poetry
Gould Community by Ryan Clark // Poetry
County Mayo, 1975 by George Franklin // Poetry
American Mantra by Chris Bullard // Poetry

II. Thresholds

Another Dream on an Old Theme by Joan Mazza // Poetry
All Hallows’ Eve by Joan Mazza // Poetry
postcard from home by Rowan Tate // Poetry
disposal by Christianna Soumakis // Poetry
Daydreamer by Maudie Bryant // Visual Art
Brooklyn Bedtime Stories by LindaAnn LoSchiavo // CNF

III. Communion

Communionism by James B. Nicola // CNF
helium by Rowan Tate // Poetry
estuary fable by Christianna Soumakis // Poetry
salento sound bath: six visions by Shelley Pellegrin // Poetry

IV. Refractions

Untethered by Maudie Bryant // Visual Art
The Commission By Scott Pomfret // Fiction
We Should Not Embrace by Suzanne Glade // Poetry
Stress Test by Kevin Brown // CNF