 WELCOME
This issue has been a long time coming, and we thank you for
rolling with us while we worked to complete “Healing.” To make
up for the long wait, this double issue is one of our biggest ever and a
proper way to celebrate the healing facilitated by our talented writers.
We’re slowly catching up and adapting to the changes in the world of
publishing, and we appreciate the grace we received while completing
our final decisions, the careful assembly of the order, and the design
work done by our Editorial Assistants here at CSU Pueblo.
For “Healing,” we are thrilled to feature photography by Jim Ross—
thoughtful shots of coneflowers, roses, thistles, and swallowtails.
These images cause us not only to slow down and reflect on the beauty
we need, they also show us the sharp parts of ourselves as we see in
nature. We are fragile and also guarded when we listen to the landscape,
alive around us.
In 2023, we are still reconnecting after lockdown and processing the
strangeness of remote work, as seen in the poetry of David Antonio
Reyes. We are resting and recovering with Connie Wieneke’s regimen
for treating epilepsy, using our rituals to struggle through our migraines,
and growing stronger in the long year of post-op recovery.
We face grief, anger, and dread with Mary Kay Knief’s “Lost in
Space,” a moving poem for a husband with dementia. We cling to
memory with our mother’s recipe box and honor family stories of the
lean times when they ate elm seeds for sustenance. We stitch ourselves
together in time by playing with time ticking down and by speculating
how time travel allows us to meet our younger selves. We dream and
escape. We personalize Little Red Riding Hood, we save a porcupine
by shooing it off the road, and we struggle and dream of playing the
rice drum in the Moon Festival.
Healing unfolds the maps of where we have been and where we are
going. It could be alongside Fernando Esteban Flores writing where
“Spanish rules the paint peeling / paper walls” or Tomie Bitton’s witty
essay about being forever stuck in Walmart. It follows the lead of
frigate birds, and it walks along the coast to where we can calmly proclaim
heaven as a beach and then apologize to the fickle waves. We are
forgiving ourselves so we can laugh again without guilt, plant flowers
for the monarchs, relearn the power of verbs, and be nourished in the
warmth of outstretched hands.
In the spirit of this theme, we are grateful that we can keep Pilgrimage
in the world and work on the next steps to rebuild and grow
stronger moving forward. We are taking practical steps to improve
operations. We are organizing our submissions into new categories and
adding readers to improve our response times. We also have plans in
motion to connect and grow community. The digital space will help
us celebrate our authors that are not in southern Colorado. We have
resumed our social media, our website will soon include sample work,
and there will be a new option to purchase a digital version of the
issue. We will also begin workshops and outreach in our region. Stay
tuned with more updates because our hope is that these changes will
help us heal, rebuild, and grow.
Again, thank you to the contributors, our readers, and everyone on
our staff who make up this community. We hope this issue was worth
the wait.•
Juan Morales
Pueblo, CO
June 2023
Read excerpts from this issue here.
Sample contributors include:
Claire Cella, Barbara Johnstone, Lorrie Wolfe, Matt Daly, Hannah Sicilano, Tomie Anne Bitton, Hisham Bustani (translated by Toraya El-Rayyes).
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