Maybe the cold, winter months of its compilation seeped onto the pages. Maybe we’re suffering from seasonal affective disorder. Whatever the reason, RCR#3 has become a dark and brooding thing, full of abandoned cities and restless characters. Lost children in Russell Jaffe’s “A Rainbow as Otherwise Noted” give way to wandering adults in Jennifer Denrow’s “Inside What Is Ours,” city dwellers unsure how to handle the assumed nostalgia of farmland. But it's not all sad. Even as a storm brews in Daniel Carter’s “I Want to Live Both/In,” eagles circle above in Mark DeCarteret’s “My Portrait Sitting,” forcing us to look up toward a possible blue crease in the otherwise gray, oily skies of Ted Jean’s paintings. And at the zenith of hope, G.M. Holder asks, Do we deserve to see the sun? Have we earned it yet? The issue is full of more quiet loneliness and clanging violence, making sad so beautiful, we’ll take it over joy.

A special thanks to all of our issue #3 contributors:

Daniel Carter
Mark DeCarteret
Jennifer Denrow
G.M. Holder
Russell Jaffe
Ted Jean
Tom Oristaglio