Our introductory note is from Ellis Eden. You may recognize Ellis from her wonderful Substack guest post, titled “The Wisdom of The Hobbit.” Ellis is a writer & fine artist with a background in print design. She has worked for Ploughshares and River Styx. Ellis is a Midwest transplant to the South, living in a mosquito-breeding experiment known as Florida. Given the choice, she’d rather stay home and read, but if a wizard comes knocking, she’s always up for an adventure.

Aaron Lelito, Editor in Chief

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Salutations writers! It is with a glowing heart that I introduce the 33^rd issue of Wild Roof Journal. Reading the proofs, I was struck by the vibrant colors in almost every piece. So, for a week I pestered my writing community with a question: What is your favorite color? Of my mostly scientific and somewhat biased survey of 74 souls, this is the result:

• Despite blue’s record as a reigning world champion among writers, green was the most popular hue and the overall winner by far. Interestingly, green is linked to higher creative performance and an open-mindedness toward new experiences.
• Blue was still quite popular, but with half the votes of green. The majority of blue-lovers identified as she/they, and preferred a dark blue, toward indigo.
• Black was a surprise to the podium, taking home third place—good news for purveyors of black turtlenecks and fountain pens.
• Pink championed fourth, with most voters preferring a pink edging toward purple.
• Purple and red tied for fifth.
• Yellow and orange tied for sixth, with all lovers of yellow identifying as she/they.
• One beautiful and brave writer voted for brown.

Though every work in this delightful issue merits pages of praise, I must bow to brevity and tempt you with a select few. I have organized small collections with an eye/mind to colors of the season.

Blue

Spring is a special kind of Eden, when the sky is an unbroken shell of blue. Bare branches unfold a currency of leaves, and winter’s shadow fades under the returning sun. Windows and hearts are thrown open to the “tranquil sunny haze, crisp February days” of Allisonn Church’s “Little Love.” Cobalt skies summon a hopeful spirit from the lambent earth in Erika Medina’s “To See Beyond,” the cover art for the issue. Mykki Rios’ “Abandon . . .” captures this resurrection in blue: “the sky is a horizon is a halo wrapped around a wrist is a friendship bracelet . . . is skyward is supercharged is yes is now is go.”

Green

In Kathryn Weld’s “The Fall (as Eve),” the exquisite idyll of spring is fleeting, transitory, a bittersweet victim to the wheel of time—“I started to mourn a beauty that never  / would last . . . lasting is illusion—but still I could not stop / gardening.” Another kind of wild green paradise is found in Sarah Wetzel’s “Last night, late Eden,” where unexpected joy is found in the congress of feral foxes and a moonlit forest—“the dark opening, the flowering weed, a rift / soaked in splendid light.” Despite the lush, verdant promise of spring, Noah Soltau’s “Wildflowers” offers resistance to the manicured, superficial beauty of suburban life through acts of vernal rebellion: “I pulled a packet of seeds and sowed the space between green and bunker on the third hole. For a couple of minutes I pretend my bed is a grave and everything is quiet.” Mahmoud Elmardi’s painting, “The Original Green Castle,” echoes this tension of perfection/imperfection, inside/outside, figure/ground, where the viewer questions where dreams begin and reality ends.

Red

Red isn’t usually a color associated with spring, but for new life, the sacrifice of a mother’s blood is a necessary rite. Elizabeth Townsend’s “To Talk About Giving Birth,” illuminates the mysteries of a daughter’s arrival: “And, off to one side, you see her—barely living, / but blood-baring, like a toe or a tongue, / solemn, still in her purple burial, / boneless as fruit.” Even in death, the echoes of blood are strong. N.W. Hicks’ “The Ghosts that We Carry” ties incorporeal presence to present, memory to ghosted flesh: “You tell her about the time / you saw a ghost apple / in your grandfather’s orchard / after he died and no one was left / to pick the apples at harvest time.”

Beyond blood, Kate Gough’s “Ley Lines” cannulates the veins of leaves, hands, rivers, and stone: “i am in love with the full force of the verdant tide rising and falling within their embossed veins, flowing out through invisible rivers to the heavens.”

Purple & Black

Underneath the bright colors and pageantry of spring lies a quiet darkness where future and past rest together in anticipation. Lavender clouds and flying geese circle the bruised horizon of Amy Smith’s “Breakfast at the Truck Stop, 6:58 am.” In Andi Myles’ “An engineered model of unconventional positive-affect paradigms,” the fragile, raspberry-tender quality of existence is explained through the form of a scientific abstract. From under a black shroud, Cynthia Atkins’ “How to Speak Ill of the Dead,” reveals ancestral bones of grief and rage: “The dead could weaponize and starve / you for attention. They are hoarders. They keep everything.”

But there is always hope, even in the darkest hours, days, and years. Derek Thomas Dew’s “Painted Over” is a reminder that “we can be new, we can live completely as our own field of vision, chorusing in twilight purples with scattering breaths . . . if the things we can hold will deliver us, there is a chance they will first fall upon all we wanted to escape.”

Rainbow

There are spring days that defy categorization, kaleidoscopic prisms of summer sun and winter rain that transform a gray sky into a celebration of life. If you struggle to pick a favorite color, these poems are for you: Danielle Shorr’s “Prize Counter” presents a procession of prizes from a ticket counter, some tangible, others intangible; Bethany Cutkomp’s “what makes me human” is a list of disconnected experiences merged at the nexus of a singular life; and Alex Dodt’s “Two Birds, No Stone” gives us instructions on how to transform stone hearts into colorful songbirds: “There is a bird and a stone in your body,” it begins.

Close-reading of WRJ’s Spring edition was a transformative experience for me, and it has been an honor to inhabit these pages. If I could have one wish, it would be to read it with you, to prod you in the ribs every other page and whisper, “This is the good part, are you paying attention?” And perhaps, after all, this is the function of great writing, to poke us in the belly and say: This is the good part. Pay attention.

Stay Soft,

Ellis Eden