CRANE {press}

As we stated in our previous post, a number of changes are occurring to Crane Press. Though most of the change is occurring behind the scenes and is focused around our organization, growth strategy and editorial process, part of it will occur right in front of your face. We’ve paired up with a talented web designer and are dedicated to overhauling the design and functionality of our site. We want to provide readers and contributers with a website that they can bring home to their parents; a site that is respectable, professional and just down right beautiful.

We are still working on releasing our first issue of CRANE this month, followed shortly by our Series 1 Chapbooks, which will probably then be followed shortly by the launch of our new look.*

Stay tuned, cause cool things are gonna happen.

*These events may happen completely out of order.

So…it’s the end of July, and we have yet to produce our first issue of CRANE.  About that: well, you see, funny story…

Even though it’s been a few weeks since our founding, we here at Crane Press are still thinking about and discussing just what exactly we want to do with our flagship publication. The consensus: we want to do something awesome, something progressive and way more than run-of-the-mill. Our goal is to build an eco-system of mutual inspiration and creative exchange between the emerging artists of our generation. We have some ambitious plans, chiefly in the way of crafting a dialogue between artistic mediums, that we feel will be a major building block in the creation of this abstract biome.

So here we are in the last week of July, with enough pieces for our first issue, four ferociously creative personnel on staff, a series of amazing chapbooks in the works and some crazy ideas that we are dying to put into practice.  Expect Issue 1 to come out in August, along with a revised, passionate, more hands-on approach to how we do things henceforth.

We thank you for your interest, your patience and your support. Here’s to you, the readers and contributors that will help us on this journey, for this journey is your journey too.

by Brandon Courtney

When she says, “we give birth beside the grave, the light shines a
moment, then it’s dark once more,” she is misquoting Samuel
Beckett, or more precisely, Pozzo, one of Beckett’s characters in
Waiting for Godot.  We’re arguing over the position of the headlights,
whether they should be on or off while passing a funeral procession
in a car.  She doesn’t see how this could possibly matter.  I tell her
it’s a matter of respect—fabricate a story about the lights illuminating
a path to the cemetery for the bereaved to follow.  We drive in silence. 

I don’t tell her that Lucky—the albino Pozzo keeps at the end of a
rope—suffers willingly, perfectly, and without protest.  Beckett
intended for Pozzo and Lucky’s relationship to be analogous to all
relationships, that in the second act Lucky falls mute and Pozzo
mourns, unaware that it was he who caused the silence.  The rope
wrapped around Lucky’s neck is shorter in the second act than it is
in the first act. 

I don’t tell her how important this one detail is to understanding
love, or  how  she has misquoted Beckett, that Pozzo actually says,
“They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant,
 then it’s night once more.”  I don’t explain the importance of the
difference between beside and astride—one meaning: by or at
the side of; the other meaning: with a leg on each side.  Instead,
I tell her about the graffiti I saw on the side of St. Thomas
Aquinas Church in bright red spray paint: The sound of your
heart is just your fists pounding on the locked doors
of the church.

by Scot Siegel

when my wife knits

her hands do not stick

to a web; nor do they pick

lice from our son’s black hair.

No, they flutter like wings

of down, hiding

pearly talons.

~

rain is the drum on our home

a sod mound tickled by the wind

the din of the downpour thrums

like a crane from another century

once, geese crossed the elevated

plane of our street and trilled

when it was still a thicket of alder.

~

when crows vanish, you can tell

by the pitch of sleet and the piano

lamp flickering; some winter-over

by flying backwards in the storm

the wind is the gray piccolo

procession they follow,

or lead, depending.

We here at CRANE {press} are stoked to announce that we are reviewing submissions for the first issue of our imaginatively titled magazine, CRANE, which we hope will run as a monthly online/print publication. We are most interested in Short Fiction, Micro/flash fiction and Poetry by young, emerging writers of the current college/grad school generation. Check out our submission guidelines and please send us your work!

Greetings comrades! Let us explore the human condition yes?