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YOUR CART

January & February
​2021

Women :: Nonbinary :: Art :: Fiction :: Poetry

Collage. Background of pink and purple blur. Foreground: black and white detached hand releases black balls speckled with stars into a white space encircled by a screw bracelet.
Going Swimming / Shayna Gee
Abstract image: A plate of fruit on a table beside a knife and candlestick.
Demeter in Winter / Diana Whitney
Nude woman in black and white faces away from the viewer. She stands in a sanctuary with her arms spread open wide. Collage.
This Isn't the time for this poem but it is / Rewa Zeinati
Aerial view of green spirals with some yellow and red accents
Because We Have Never Been Monkeys, Porch or Otherwise / Ashley M. Jones
Woman eating soup
The Weekends / Amy Miller
Ocean
The Bird Flies Away because It Cannot Stand / Ayesha Asad
Pencil sketch. Two women on a train.
The Desire to Speak / Gail Entrekin
My Mother Has a Stroke, and I — / Jennifer L. Freed
Woman walking through a crowded marketplace
The Market Place / Roseline Mgbodichinma
Upside down ice cream cone melting in a plain white bowl
Democracy / Xu Xi
Shattered glass with red background
Dr. Christine Blasey Ford Testified on My GRE Test Day / Jasmin Lankford
Black and white drawing. A parliament of owls on a snowy branch.
What the Godmothers Said of Their Writing / Melanie Perish
Collage. Boy in black and white sleeps curled up in a microscopic image of body tissue in blue.
Blueprint of the Waiting Room / Kelly Cressio-Moeller
Blue dome with dots of stars and orange clouds below. In the bottom center is person in black standing in a sliver of moon.
A Vacuum's Tale of a Bird / Mandira Pattnaik
Apollo stripping Marsyas
Poet & Artist, Jenna Lê
Art: Jenna Lê, Molly Dunham, & Public Domain

Editor's Note

Welcome, friends, to the January-February issue of West Trestle Review. If you are reading this note, you made it through 2020, and that is no small feat. We made it through, too, and we are grateful.

While some Americans have suggested that nothing would really change on Jan. 1, that there was no real point to the celebration of a new year, and that, in fact, a new year is all human-made nonsense, I, for one, welcomed it with glee. At midnight, I stood with my family on a dark road in my rural neighborhood, sang a wobbly "Auld Lang Syne" and howled to the stars.

"One of the most important features of rituals is that they do not only mark time; they create time. By defining beginnings and ends to developmental or social phases, rituals structure our social worlds and how we understand time, relationships, and change," Rebecca J. Lester writes in, "The Importance of Ritual: Marking Life Events in a Socially Distant World."  

The necessity of forgoing the usual rituals in an effort to save lives has left many of us unmoored, Lester writes, and I wonder if this may be one reason a fair few literary journals have appeared on the scene during the pandemic. It does add something ritualistic to my life to open the submission queue, read new work and debate its merits with the WTR team. In addition, pulling this issue together during a long winter break from my day job kept me focused in an otherwise haze of powdered sugar and Mario Kart marathons. For editors, the release of a brand new issue also marks the passage of time. 

And here we are, pressing our stamp upon the calendar of life once again. This time, though, we are thrilled to have welcomed Joan Kwon Glass along for the journey as co-editor of poetry. Joan joined us mid-issue, and her enthusiasm is a joy to behold. I hope you'll join us in giving her a warm virtual welcome. 

As for this issue, it is another beauty, if we do say so ourselves, including beautiful and thought-provoking work by Ayesha Asad, Kelly Cressio-Moeller, Gail Entrekin, Jennifer L. Freed, Shayna Gee, Ashley M. Jones, Jasmin Lankford,  Roseline Mgbodichinma, Amy Miller, Mandira Pattnaik, Melanie Perish, Diana Whitney, and our Fairlies feature by Xu Xi. Jenna Lê was kind enough to contribute two pieces of art to this issue, and she graciously allowed us to reprint one of her fine poems. Read more about  Lê here. 

While I fear I may have already gone on too long, I want to add that we—the editors—did have a meaningful discussion about whether not to include content warnings with the texts we publish. As West Trestle Review is a journal that celebrates the work of women and nonbinary writers,  it's true that themes of abuse and trauma in its many forms often arise in our pages. This is a continuing conversation, but at this time, we'd like to issue a general content warning for the entire publication instead of individual pieces. We hope that when you share poems and stories you read here—and, please do share!—that you will issue a content warning if it feels right.

​Also, please reach out to our contributors on social media and let them know their works were seen, heard, felt, or understood. It does help to dissolve the bubble of loneliness. 

That's all for now, dear people. Thank you, again, for being here. 

Write on!
Patricia Caspers
Founding / Managing Editor

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