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​January & February

​​​​ 2023

Women :: Non-binary :: Art :: Fiction :: Poetry


Heart of a blue flower suspended in front of a plinth behind which are two skeletons. A raptor's claw clutches a timepiece
Dancing with Baryshnikov / Sonya Schneider
Dark hand holding a golden fruit, from which juice is streaming down the wrist. Behind the hand, light filters through trees outside
Coming Home to Hong Kong / Sonia FL Leung
in foreground, three cups  and two plates on bright table-cloth; in background, strange clockface in front of orange disk
Something grand about grandmother / Anannya Uberoi
Pair of disembodied hands, one holding surgical scissors cutting into a strange object, both hands festooned with moths
Local Time / Cynthia Buiza
Profile of a pensive person, slightly bent forward, hands in front of torso and face, rendered in dramatic blue, black, and white
Yearly Report to My Mother on the Anniversary of Her Death / Cheryl Waitkevich
An old typewriter floats in front of a pocked planet alongside a vivid yellow-orange bloom and two disembodied hands
GRANDMA WHISPERS SECRETS / ANNE ANTHONY
surreal desert scene, with giant sun on horizon and strange trees and a small mammal in the foreground
gratitude / geraldine connolly
Text: Artist Kimberlee Frederick. Interview & Gallery
Pink zinnia illustration with white and purple background.
A study on pink / Catherine-Esther Cowie
Nearly-naked body of a bearded man with his arms stretched above his head, various birds, including a gull and a blue bird, in front of him
Noah's Rats / Elia Anie Kim
Yellow petals or licking flames swirl in front of red background
Burn / Joyce E. Young
Turquoise shape of a woman ascending a staircase toward a billowing cumulonimbus cloud; a skull floating on the right
After Reading Geohazard Warning Signs at Mt. Rainier / Rebecca Brock
Highly dramatic sunrise behind jagged mountain top, with golden and scarlet rays dominating the sky
Salt / Rachel Mallalieu
Black and white frame with red devil skeleton and moth surrounded by yellow flowers.  A hand reaches toward them. There's a small 8 tattoo on the wrist.
Sleepover with Korean Thrillers / Yujia Li
Waves lapping on a rocky beach where a serpent holds a flower in its mouth; above the water, a headless being floats
To the Greenland Shark / Dorsey Craft
Torso of figure wearing graduation cap, with hands crossed, depicted in turquoise, red, black and white
I wish you were a boy, though / Sudha Subramanian
Naked female body, minus the head, standing near several spotted toadstools
consider this a sunrise / erin pesut
January / February 2023
Dear Reader,

I didn’t want to write about this. I told myself that no one cares what I think, and it doesn’t matter anyway because so few people will read it. Also, I want people to like me, and I’m terrified of pissing off—well, everyone. I certainly don’t want people to think that I’m writing this for the attention. But here’s the thing: I’m continually surprised that so many white people still tell me how much they loved American Dirt. And I am surprised that WTR receives many submissions from white poets and fiction writers writing from the point of view of  BIPOC folx.

As a white editor, I don’t think it’s my place to publish those pieces, and I’m not telling you this because I think I deserve a cookie. I’m writing this because maybe there are five white people out there who might read this and reflect, in a new light, on what they're writing—as I did.

Because I have written these poems. It began when I learned about Biddy Mason, a Black, enslaved woman who fought for her freedom in California, worked as a midwife and nurse, and became a wealthy philanthropist in Los Angeles. I read about Mason in 2006, and I wrote a persona poem in her voice, and it was published.

I felt I’d been given permission. I want to say I hadn’t been told that I shouldn’t appropriate the stories of BIPOC folx, but that wouldn’t be true. My justification was my impatience. Mason’s story couldn’t wait to be told, and what if I tried really hard to get it right, really researched the topic, and what if no one else ever writes about Biddy Mason and her life is kept a secret forever?

Reader, her life is not a secret.

I didn’t stop with Mason. Following the same reasoning, I went on to write several more persona poems from the perspectives of BIPOC women.

Then one day, after feeling uncomfortable about it for a long time, I imagined that there was an issue I knew particularly well from personal experience, and then I imagined that I’d been writing about this topic for years, but no one would publish my work, not because the writing was bad but because it didn’t fit the editors’ narrow definition of good, or because it wasn’t deemed palatable to people who hadn’t lived what I’d lived. Then I imagined that I spent all that frustrating time watching other people who knew nothing about my lived experience get book deal after book deal, win awards, appear on Oprah.

Yep, in order to have a better idea of where BIPOC writers are coming from, I had to make it about me, and I know how messed up it is that I had to make it about me, but I’ve stopped writing those poems. I’m sorry I wrote them.

Still, I do want my writing to be inclusive, and I think the only way forward, for me, is collaboration, and if I don’t know any BIPOC writers who are willing to collaborate with me, I need to ask myself why that is.

If I’m wrong about anything I’ve written here, I hope someone will call me out on my bullshit, but I also know it’s not anyone’s job to call me out on my bullshit, so in that case I hope I figure it out eventually, and then maybe (probably) I'll write about it some more.

For now, I am anxious that this editor’s note might overshadow the amazingness that is this issue of West Trestle Review. And it is amazing!  We’ve got grandmothers and gratitude, fathers and sleepovers, and a study of the color pink. We've got Baryshnikov and Dickinson! Plus, so much more. This issue features horror-inspired digital collage by Kimberlee Frederick, poetry by Anne Anthony, Rebecca Brock, Cynthia Buiza, Geraldine Connolly, Catherine Cowie, Dorsey Craft, Elia Anie Kim, Sonia FL Leung, Yujia Li, Rachel Mallalieu, Erin Pesut, Sonya Schneider, Anannya Uberoi, Cheryl Waitkevich, and Joyce E. Young, with fiction by Sudha Subramanian.

And when I say we, I’m including WTR’s new fiction editor, DeMisty Bellinger, and new poetry reader, Katherine Huang. If you haven’t had a chance, send them a big welcome! We’re so happy they’re here.

If you fall in love with something you read in WTR, please give our contributors a shout out on social media. It’s always joyous to see our readers and contributors cheering for each other.

As always, WTR comes with a general content warning. Feel free to use one when sharing if it seems appropriate.
 
Onward, 
​Patricia Caspers
Founding EIC, West Trestle Review
Art: Kimberlee Frederick and ​AI generated by DALL·E
View Kimberlee Frederick's full gallery here. 

  
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