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Blood Lotus – March 2008

Issue 8

March 2008

Quarterly

Micah Zevin

Rage and risk in writing is a powerful tool that can generate the most passionate work. In Blood Lotus, issue 8, the editors believe that if you write you should “Write like words are beautiful, powerful and dangerous…” In “katrina” by R.D. Coleman we are exposed to such risks and conviction head on: “my family up and / left me here, they knew / it called to me. / …could smell the gas out by / the road. / life was done, she said. / she surely meant to die.”

Rage and risk in writing is a powerful tool that can generate the most passionate work. In Blood Lotus, issue 8, the editors believe that if you write you should “Write like words are beautiful, powerful and dangerous…” In “katrina” by R.D. Coleman we are exposed to such risks and conviction head on: “my family up and / left me here, they knew / it called to me. / …could smell the gas out by / the road. / life was done, she said. / she surely meant to die.”

In Glenn Sheldon’s poem “L’Actuel: Diminishing,” we are exposed to a much lighter subject matter – the conundrum of returning to a place you had a great experience at the first time, only to be disappointed at a second tasting:

Well,
the French fries are still called
Belgian fries. Again, I’m asked
by the handsome waiter to wear
a bib. Again, I decline. But
something has changed, not me.
Can 24 hours rob a place of its
magic or am I less of a magician?

In the fiction section, read the very first line of “Roommates” by Matt Jenkins and be transported back to the stereotypical problems of living with someone in a college dorm. “When they refused Bradley’s dorm change, the office told him: Wait one more semester and your roommate starts to grow on you. You’ll see.”

In the nonfiction piece “Sweet Nothings” by Gretchen Clark, we are led into the unresolved and unfulfilled reveries of a child: “In this house I had primate dreams. I longed, not for sibling companionship, but for a monkey. I wanted a chimpanzee that I could dress in green overalls and rock until it fell asleep.”

Blood Lotus is a shape-shifting chameleon of a flower that pricks you with one of its thorns not only to keep your attention, but so you are aware of what change is possible through creation.
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