Issue #27 Spring 2024
|
Dear Readers,
Welcome to the 27th Issue of Jet Fuel Review! The editors are excited to showcase the exquisite curated works featured within this issue. After months of reading more than 800 submissions, the editors have carefully chosen a collection of poetry, prose, and art that culminates to display a vast and enigmatic sampling of experiences highlighted through the human condition. Housed at Lewis University in Romeoville, Illinois, Jet Fuel Review is a student- run, faculty-advised, five-time CMA Pinnacle Award-winning literary journal that publishes writers and artists from across the globe. We are honored not only to provide a creative platform for people’s voices but also to produce a journal that is impactful to those who read it. Our featured cover piece for this issue, "Blue Telephone," by Luiza Maia comes from her Nostalgia series where she rediscovers and reimagines items from antique stores, places where “objects carry stories from the decades in which they were used.” Maia urges her viewers to search for the uses, meaning, and beauty in everyday objects from a different time, all while in a landscape submerged in seemingly distant but familiar patterns and colors. The poetry section of this issue highlights a fascinating set of topics and voices, such as the work of Reyzl Grace: a poet, translator, and short story writer from Alaska whose work engages with her experiences being a member of the LGBTQ+ community. You may also read the stylings of Mina Khan, a Korean-Pakistani American poet from New York who plunges into conversations pertaining to the role of the woman, cyclicality, violence, tenderness, and the everyday. We’re also thrilled to showcase Anoushka Kumar, Grace Marie Liu, Charlie Coleman, Lynne Thompson, Mike Puican, and Donna Vorreyer along with many others. The fiction section opens with “Owl” by Riley Manning, whose eloquent style buries meaning below the surface, inviting readers to recognize the non-viscous relationships between the bizarre, the absurd, and the sentimental. “Dirt” by Alina Polatsek continues similar themes by weaving through depictions of grief, motherhood, and exhaustion, letting her reader experience all the nuance of these processes. Bryan Betancur follows in “Boquisucio,” stitching different languages, cultures, and the nuance of familial ties, trauma, and love. Our fiction section also features “Road to TayyIbah” by Raja’a Khalid, Beth Sherman’s “We Pay Cash,” and “Slipping Through the Cracks” by Karen George. In addition to the artwork created by our front and back cover artist, Luiza Maia, our art section features the abstract, dynamic worlds of mythology and wonder crafted by Christy Lee Rogers, as well as the decaying, displaced, and magnificent world created by Erika Lynet Salvador in “Uprooted.” The work of Marsha Solomon, then, can best be described as the point where all of these converge, her collection depicting a new lens through which to see the beginning of the universe. Along with the abstract precision of Kristina Erny’s works, our art section features tales as old as time; reinvented, unafraid, and purely stunning. The literature and artwork in these pages are a testament to the diverse perspectives and experiences that are currently present in our society and to voices that are both candid and sincere. We invite you to dive into our 27th issue, and we hope that you appreciate the pieces that make up this issue as much as we do. Read on! Lauren Lotarski, Samuel McFerron & the Jet Fuel Review Editors |