From the Editor

Our debut issue met with a warm response, and we hope this issue will be as well received.  In addition to our regular offerings of short fiction and poetry, we are pleased to present two essays, both dealing with work and its impact on lives.  In "Good Morning, Miss Dove," Catherine Rankovic attempts to enter the machine; humor, much like the Chinese method of room arrangement she practices, keeps the author on task through a mammogram, a salesman's visit, and a recalcitrant computer.  Its tonal complement, Emily Strauss' "Taft, California: 6:00 P.M.," is an unsparing description of an oil boom town to which the author makes a return visit after thirty years, but stays only one night.

In "Redbird," Christine Hale crafts a careful portrait of a working life where physical passion seems chidden and misplaced.  A sensual attraction reawakens between a woman and her husband's brother when he returns to his brother's farm in search of work; when he leaves again, as he did once before, for Hollywood or fortunes in the west, she is near the kindling point.  By contrast, Nancy Zafris' "Blip in a Limo" portrays a character who musters his passion for the passersby on the freeway as they catch a glimpse through his apartment's picture window; Scranton Richie is a master of fakery, committed to creating an impact on people who slight him with inattention.  The excuses people make, the blunders and the fantasies for which they ransom their lives, round out three other extaordinary stories.

The poetry in this issue is well represented by the lyric, which in its contemporary form is often a song of sorrows.  "For My Batterer on his Birthday" by Tracy Philpot and "The Town Where John Logan was Born" by Rustin Larson share a stubborn aptitude for hope.  Diane Wakoski's excerpt from "The Wild Rose" is intense and brief as a moment of nostalgia.  "Solitaire" by Pam Bernard is a shocking yet exacting narrative glimpse into a scene where sex and unconcern do battle.  "Between Merced and Morning" by Ann Fisher-Wirth depicts how one night on a train provides freedom but no escape.

The fall issue of Natural Bridge, only its second, is a month tardy, like the season itself.  The damp, drizzly November in the soul that Melville wrote about remained at sea; in unseasonable warmth, people went on with school and work and street life in small fits of exuberance and exasperation.  Appropriately, the work in this issue feels fraught and full of impending change.  Now, therefore, is the right time to read this autumn's offering of essays, stories, and poems.