Les Kay

Leila Cohan

Editor's Note

We are surrounded by anniversaries. Thursday, the 29th of August, was the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. In a week and a half, we will be reminded—incessantly—of the tragedy at the World Trade Center.

Five years ago, everything changed. Or so we've been told. Like everyone else I know, I was glued to the television—that ubiquitous mediator of history—struggling to understand the sudden intrusion of what seemed a Hollywood special effects sequence into real life. In San Francisco, we watched the news reports all day—in cafes, in pizza joints, in our offices, and in the darkness of our own living rooms. I spent the next few weeks sleeping only fitfully. Each siren seemed destined for the Golden Gate Bridge. Both the Transamerica Building and the Federal Reserve Building were surrounded by concrete blast barriers.

Last year, when Katrina hit, I was working from home in a tiny studio apartment in Oakland, CA, waking each day to the news. The television stayed on all day. Incomprehensible images flickered across the screen: muddy flood waters, a city submerged, refugees clinging to rooftops, shirtless youths wading through a toxic slough, trailing "pillaged" cases of soda. The media lost, momentarily, their neutrality and wept into the cameras.

As you read through the first issue of the Ward 6 Review, you'll notice that only Lyn Lifshin's poems directly address either of these tragedies. Her poems offer haunting images of the lives impacted by Katrina, reminding us, subtly, that the true tragedy was not what we saw on television, but the continuing disarray of each individual life.

Like many of you, no doubt, I once imagined that my insights and deft facility for rhyme could somehow change the world. Perhaps such sophomoric notions are laughable. But, as you read through the fiction, poetry, and essays in this first issue, consider how each small work of art engages with the world. You can see how these poems and stories, regardless of their tone, do not veer from questions. Instead, each author has struggled with their craft to bring us the smallest of gifts—and even in the midst of the darkest story—the luminance of craft, of care, and of the mere fact of survival remains.

Chekhov, of course, knew this. In the story from which we've taken our name, Chekhov presents a tale of the most abject human suffering. And yet, it is a beautiful story.

We are surrounded by anniversaries, and yet we are celebrating. Here, at last, is the inaugural issue of Ward 6 Review. No single poem and no single story will change the world. But together, perhaps these voices will help us remember the luminance that always remains, regardless of what darkness surrounds us. Perhaps, they will remind us what it means to be human, to survive, to live, and yes, to love.