Our introductory note is written by Lisa DellaPorta. Lisa contributes the flash fiction piece “Colors” to this issue. She holds a BS in English Teaching from West Chester University and lives in the deep woods of Philadelphia. Recent publication credits for her work include The Washington Square Review, New Letters, and The Bookends Review.  

I’ll hand it to Lisa to say a few words about the issue.

Aaron Lelito, Editor in Chief

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To me, summer has always felt like the strongest reminder of the scope and power of nature. Roasting heat and gravy-thick air are enough to force the slowing of our pace while simultaneously producing the bountiful explosion of flowers and fruits that defines the season. It demands laziness as a method of survival. Vacations are planned; workdays are cut short. Something primal in us knows that this should be welcomed, embraced, and taken advantage of while society and situation allow. And for many of us, myself included, that languid tempo includes the stillness of reading, of resting your body in one place but allowing your mind to wander far and wide.

Digesting this issue, I was struck by a recurring motif across many of the pieces—water, an element that defines much of my own summer experience. We fill our pools with it, fall asleep to its soothing rhythm during thunderstorms, drive long distances to embrace its deep collection in lakes and oceans, and keep bottles of it ever-near to replace the beads of moisture forced from our bodies and rolled down sun-kissed foreheads and sticky thighs. When it does not rain, I stalk barefoot into the twilight of my small backyard, unroll the battered garden hose, and drench the thickets of summer squash and pungent basil, slaking their thirst to temper my future hunger. In Jeremiah Gilbert’s stunning photo “Banaue Rice Terraces,” we see the deep, landscaped puddles of an ancient rice paddy farm and the soggy perfection that creates one of our most common and essential foods. On all sides of the globe, for thousands of years, our relationship to water has been universal.

At this moment, it is impossible to not have heard about the collective water panic that is coming for many of us. Regional droughts, now years long, drain reservoirs and threaten to shutter entire communities built over parched, cracking earth. In Stacey C. Johnson’s “a kind of winglessness,” we’re presented with two women traversing such a bygone lake, “wondering about the water before it was gone, / the lives it held until it couldn’t.” Ryan Di Francesco’s “At 4 a.m. I wake. Thinking” reinforces that even machines have their own relationship to water, however unnatural: “human mouths licked puddles of / air conditioner / water / dripping twelve stories high in / the alleyways.” I think forward to the summers of our grandchildren and wonder if their readings of our poetry will be met with confusion and nostalgia, if they will learn of a world lusher and wetter than their own.

Still, for the time being, there is green and there are blue-skied afternoons, long and yawning before us with open-ended possibilities. Jackie McClure’s “What I Took from the Tideline” entices us to take a meandering journey, hunting for “sand-sculpted shell pieces / so sea-softened / they might have been bisque.” Allison Camp’s “Gifts from the Night” suggests that secret treasures await us: “Under an ancient pine’s limbs spread like a full-bodied skirt sweeping the ground, lay a secret place.”

I encourage you to get lost in the welcoming cool of this issue of Wild Roof Journal and to find your own summer joy in this season of lazy abundance.

Happy solstice, readers,

Lisa DellaPorta